From a bit back, but worth posting now from BOLTS:
Sarah Trites, who is approaching her 60th birthday, has made a point to vote in every federal election since she turned 18. She worries her streak will end soon.
That’s because of Question 1, a conservative-backed ballot measure this November that proposes a series of barriers to voting, and particularly to voting by mail, in her home state of Maine. The measure would roll back key voter conveniences, forcing new burdens to ballot access on huge swaths of the state electorate.
Trites lives a 10-minute drive from her local elections office, an easy trip for some, but she is disabled and cannot drive a car, and there is no public transit in her town. That local office, she said, “might as well be miles away from me.” Her vision is also impaired, and so for years she has been requesting her mail ballots by phone—an accommodation that has helped her handle voting affairs from home.
Question 1 would repeal the option to request a mail ballot by phone, requiring all voters to visit an elections office in person or to submit an application, physically or online, in order to receive one. In another change, Question 1 would require all mail voters, of which there are many in Maine (nearly half of the state voted that way last fall), to repeat this process for each election.