Bills would curb push polls, ban inmate voting

AUGUSTA – Rick Bennett remembers being “slimed.” He didn’t like it.

Bennett, president pro tem of the Senate, on Friday presented a bill to regulate “push polling” in reaction to negative campaigning against him when he ran for Congress against John Baldacci in 1994. The Maine Civil Liberties Union and the state Democratic Party both opposed the bill, along with another Bennett bill to ban prison inmates from voting.

A push poll is a form of negative campaigning that pretends to be a scientific survey but is really a ploy designed to push voters into voting for or against a particular candidate or issue.

Push polling against Bennett in the 1994 race was so bad that it was included in a chapter of a book on the subject titled “Dirty Little Secrets.” The Bennett chapter was titled, “Reach out and Slime Someone.”

Baldacci, who won the 1994 race by only 11,861 votes, told the authors, Larry Sabato and Glen Simpson, that his campaign had no connection to the push polling.

In their book, Sabato and Simpson said push polling “has become the rage in American campaigns, to the detriment of both civility and the truth. Unless aggressive action is taken, this difficult-to-catch form of political sleaze threatens to drag our already debased electioneering even lower.”

Last-minute push polling in the Bennett-Baldacci race reportedly hinted that Bennett had defaulted on a $10,000 student loan and that he had sponsored a bill to gut the budget of the state Attorney General’s Office so that “murderers would go free.” Bennett denied the allegations, calling them “total falsehoods.”

Testifying before the Legislature’s Legal and Veterans Affairs Committee on Friday, Bennett said he proposed LD 1055 to regulate push polling, which he described as “an insidious form of negative campaigning disguised as polling.”

The Bennett bill would not outlaw the practice, but would require practitioners to disclose to subjects what organization or candidate is paying for the poll, just as is required now with political ads.

Violation of the statute would carry a fine of $500 and a prison term of six months. Other states including Wisconsin and Florida have passed similar laws.

The bill was supported by Sarah Walton of the Maine League of Women Voters, who agreed that push polling should be clearly identified as a form of advertising.

Opposition came from Sally Sutton of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, who called the bill a clear violation of the freedom of speech and “inappropriate government interference,” which could inhibit traditional polling. Adam Thompson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, also objected to the bill and its “far-reaching implications.” Wording of the bill was so broad that it could complicate traditional polls, Thompson told the committee.

In a second bill proposed by Bennett on Friday, he reminded the committee that Maine and Vermont are the only two states to allow prison inmates to vote. His bill, LD 1058, would call for a referendum vote for a constitutional amendment to prevent inmates from voting. Inmates “were unwilling to live within the law and this significant right should be suspended,” Bennett said. Voting rights would be restored upon release from prison under the bill.

The inmate voting ban bill was supported by Rep. Mary Black Andrews, R-York, who withdrew her similar bill to support Bennett’s version. Andrews said she was speaking for victims of crime in support of the bill. In her door-to-door campaign over the summer, Black said her constituents expressed “outrage” and surprise that Maine inmates were allowed to vote.

Prison inmates “should not be able to control our lives from prison. It’s time for Maine to get in step with the rest of the country,” said a co-sponsor, Rep. Glenys P. Lovett, R-Scarborough.

“Let’s let the people decide,” said Rep. Philip Cressey, Jr., R-Baldwin.

The bill faced enthusiastic opposition by the MCLU’s Sutton, who asked, “What problem are we trying to fix? This is just heaping on more punishment instead of rehabilitation.” Since only 3 percent of the state’s inmates vote, they are hardly an “influential voting bloc,” Sutton said.

Poverty advocate Bob Philbrook called Maine an “island of justice and hope” for allowing inmate voting and said the Bennett bill would further “alienate” inmates from society. Quaker David Hall of Bath said the legislation was a “feel-good bill which will accomplish nothing.” The League of Women Voters joined the opposition when Walton told the committee that inmates are “still human beings, citizens and taxpayers” and that voting rights are “a key to democracy.”

The bill would work against efforts to rehabilitate inmates, said Democratic Party spokesman Thompson.

Lawmakers will discuss the merits of the bills at a work session beginning at 1:30 p.m. April 26.