Expanded voting rights

With strong support in the House and expected support in the Senate, advocates for the mentally ill who rely on guardians soon will again be making a case to the public that these Maine residents deserve a right to vote. They will have a formidable challenge, as the Election Day vote on this constitutional amendment in 1997 proved.

Even after an enthusiastic educational campaign by advocates three years ago, 194,000 voters, nearly 60 percent, opposed a measure that would have eliminated the restriction that prohibits from voting people under guardianship because of mental illness. The same question to overturn this restriction received a 130-7 vote in the House recently. The Senate is expected to consider the measure at the end of the session, in a couple of weeks. With legislative approval, it goes back to voters in November.

And there it will encounter two difficulties: that mentally ill people are incapable of voting rationally, and that guardianship implies a dire level of seriousness. In fact, neither is necessarily true. Mental illness covers a wide range of conditions, from reactions to head injury to schizophrenia. Guardianship can be requested by a patient, family or the state to handle as much as daily decisions to as little as infrequent major money questions. If everyone who needed some help occasionally were prohibited from voting, politicians could save tons of money on campaigning and simply have all voters still eligible over for dinner.

The removal of the clause it Article II of Maine’s Constitution is the end of a fight to open up the voting process, which began in 1820 with the following restrictions: no women, no Indians not taxed, no paupers, no one under age 21, no one under guardianship and no one who has not lived in Maine at least three months. Women won the right to vote in 1919; Indians, 1954; paupers, 1965; 18-year-olds, 1971; and the residency time requirement was dropped in 1973. The guardianship provision remains because of stigma and misunderstanding, though there is no relationship between having a guardian and making a rational choice in a voting booth.

Changing voters’ minds on this will be difficult. The Legislature’s support of the measure, however, provides a good start.