The Maine Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maine. It is a bicameral body composed of the lower house Maine House of Representatives and the upper house Maine Senate. The Legislature convenes at the State House in Augusta, where it has met since 1832.
The House of Representatives consists of 151 members, each chosen from single-member constituencies. The House is one of the few state legislative bodies in the U.S. to set aside special seats for Native Americans, where there are two nonvoting Representatives from the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribes. The Senate includes a varying number of members, which may under the Maine Constitution be 31, 33, or 35; the present number is 35.
Read more about Maine Legislature: Qualifications, Elections, Powers
Famous quotes containing the words maine and/or legislature:
“Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all, some villager’s familiar wood-lot, some widow’s thirds, from which her ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan, too, and old bound-marks may be found every forty rods, if you will search.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)