Electoral reform in Maine refers to efforts to changing voting and election laws in the Pine Tree State. In 2004, several Maine legislators proposed a bill to lower the voting age to 17. The proposal failed, but a compromise to allow 17 year-olds to vote in primary election if 18 by general election passed. In 2007, legislation was introduced to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but it failed. Currently, Maine is the only state besides Nebraska to allocate two of its electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote and the rest according to the winner of the popular vote in each Congressional district.
Famous quotes containing the words electoral, reform and/or maine:
“Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Undoubtedly if we were to reform this outward life truly and thoroughly, we should find no duty of the inner omitted. It would be employment for our whole nature.... But a moral reform must take place first, and then the necessity of the other will be superseded, and we shall sail and plow by its force alone.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)