YES on Question 5

“Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to remove language providing that all persons under guardianship for reasons of mental illness are disqualified from voting?”

This provision of the state constitution continues to exist long beyond its usefulness, if it ever had any, based on two ideas: that mentally ill people are incapable of voting rationally, and that guardianship implies a dire level of seriousness. Voters should know that neither of these are necessarily true and should support dropping this restriction from the constitution.

Mental illness covers a wide range of conditions, from head injury to schizophrenia. Guardianship can be requested by a patient, the state or a family out of true need, for convenience or simply to handle money questions. The point is that these conditions are not cause enough by themselves to deny the important right to vote.

Article II of Maine’s Constitution, written in 1820, gave the authority to vote to “every male citizen of the United States of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, excepting paupers, persons under guardianship, and Indians not taxed, having his residence established in this state for the term of three months next preceeding any election … .” All but one of these provisions has been erased over the years as the public and the government have recognized the need for as many residents as possible to participate in the political process.

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took care of the male citizen limit in 1919. Indians gained the right to vote in 1954. Paupers got that right in 1965. The age requirement was dropped to 18 in 1971, and the duration of residency was removed in 1973. What remains is the guardianship clause, which establishes a false line between those capable and incapable of making a rational decision in the voting booth.

There is, for instance, no restriction on voting for those with serious mental illness or retardation but without a guardian. For that matter there also is no restriction on voters who have not given candidates or issues a moment’s thought, couldn’t identify the president or name a single issue on the ballot. Maine, properly, does not reserve access to the voting booth to those who prove to have a certain level of political expertise.

More than most residents, people under state guardianship have a direct stake in the decisions made in Augusta. Like everyone else, they should have the right to help choose who will be making their decisions.