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MEMO Protect Maine Votes PAC

To: Protect Maine Votes PAC steering committee,Mark Gray, campaign managerother interested parties

From: Ben Chin, Maine People's Alliance political engagement director andcampaign field director

Today the Protect Maine Voting Rights coalition is delivering more than 68,000signatures to the office of the Secretary of State in order to ensure that a People'sVeto referendum on the elimination of Election Day voter registration will be placedon the ballot this November.

The gathering of this many signatures in the timeframe necessary through this kindof grassroots effort is unique in Maine history.

This document provides a brief overview of how this was achieved and what itmeans for the continuing campaign to protect voting rights for the people of Maine.

Timing and logistics

Due to the mechanics of the Peoples Veto process, the signing of this bill late in the

session, and our determination to place a question on the November ballot to ensurethat Election Day registration is defended as quickly as possible, we faced a windowof only about three weeks during which we could collect the 57,277 necessarysignatures and be assured they would be processed by town clerks and the

Secretary of State in time.

Many people familiar with the referendum process believed that this result wouldnot be possible through a grassroots effort and voting rights opponents publiclydeclared that they believed we would fail to gather the necessary signatures in theallotted time.

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Numbers

As you can see from the chart above showing when signatures were reported to ourtracking system, petition circulators collected an average of more than 3,000signatures per day, with a ramping-up period at the beginning of the campaign as

we trained volunteers and a continued influx of signatures even after the deadline.

Although we are submitting 68,000 signatures today, the campaign actuallygathered more than 83,000, with some being submitted tomorrow and others nothaving been validated by town clerks, or at least not in time for delivery.

68,000 is far beyond the required amount and is even well beyond our own goals forthe campaign. It is a tribute to the dedication and passion of our volunteers and tothe high level of public support for this issue.

Is this enough?

An analysis of 22 previous referendum signature gathering campaigns conductedfor Down East Magazine found that, on average, 7.27% of collected signatures arefound invalid by the Secretary of State. (On average, an additional 9.57% ofsignatures were invalidated by town clerks - all of the signatures delivered todayhave already passed this level of validation.)

With more than 68,000 signatures submitted, more than 15% could be rejected andthe question would still make Novembers ballot.

We are confidentthat, barring some huge and unforeseen development, a Peoples

Veto of the elimination of Election Day registration will be voted on in November.

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A grassroots campaign

More interesting than the fact of our success is the way in which it was achieved.

The Protect Maine Voting Rights coalition made a decision from the start to run a

grassroots campaign focused on volunteer engagement and not to hire an out-of-state petition gathering firm. Only volunteers and employees of our memberorganizations gathered signatures and the majority of the signatures were collectedby volunteers more than 1,500 in all, representing every county and almost everytown in Maine.

Never before has a Peoples Veto campaign succeeded in making the November

ballot without hiring a professional petition gathering firm.

A shoestring budget

The campaign accomplished this unprecedented feat with only around $100,000 inexpenditures on this part of the campaign, despite estimates from voting rightsopponents that any such effort would cost five times as much.

While the PAC isntrequired to release a full accounting of contributions andexpenditures until October, the public may be interested to know that all moneycontributed to the campaign so far has come from Maine individuals andorganizations and the majority of contributions have come from organizationalmembers of the Protect Maine Voting Rights coalition, who are themselves in largepart funded by their individual members.

What this means for the future

The outpouring of support for this campaign was nothing short of phenomenal.There are two main reasons why we exceeded our goals.

First, we had more volunteers working longer hours and gathering more signaturesthan we had planned for or had hoped to engage.

Second, we had a much more enthusiastic response from Maine voters than we hadanticipated. The rate of signature collection at public events and door-to-door washigher than the rate reported by other campaigns. This is due to both general

understanding of the simple, common-sense nature of the issue and widespreadsupport for protecting voting rights and maintaining Maines culture of fairness anddemocracy.

These factors bode well for the future of this campaign and for our chances inNovember. Based on the experiences of the campaign so far, we can likely expect ahigh level of grassroots and volunteer engagement and a very supportive electorate.