The last off-year election was in 1999. Although the Maine ballot lacked high-profile candidates, it offered, amid the routine mix of bond proposals, such highly emotional attention-grabbers as partial-birth abortion and medical marijuana. Maine was still a national leader in voter turnout, but with an average of less than 38 percent in years without presidential or gubernatorial races, it was leadership by default. Political scientists, here and elsewhere, blamed the nationwide decline in voter participation on the robust economy and the lack of international conflict, which, they said, caused people to focus more intently upon their personal lives.

Could things be more different now? Today’s ballot not only lacks high-profile candidates, but also anything likely to stir voters’ emotions. The six referendum questions, like the bulk of the 1999 ballot, are strictly nuts-and-bolts – housing, research and development, transportation, school repairs, environmental protection and higher education. Those days of economic boom and peace abroad seem a lifetime ago.

On the eve of that 1999 election, Maine Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky offered this worthwhile observation that running a society is more than a popularity contest: “These things (the referendum questions) will have a potentially longer-lasting impact than any candidate.” That was not meant as an affront to candidates, but as a reminder that the stuff of the bond proposals – decent living conditions, jobs, education, clean air and safe drinking water – are the very things candidates base campaigns upon.

Of course, there are candidates on today’s ballot. Nearly every town in Maine has municipal offices to fill and potential voters not yet convinced this is worth a trip to the polls should ask who has a greater impact upon their daily lives – presidents and governors or selectmen and school board members. A high turnout today will send a powerful message: Not only do voters care about the fundamentals of running a society, but they are willing to take a few minutes to do something about them.

The turnout two years ago surprised the experts – the projections were for 30 percent; the result was 45. If the voters of 1999 could overcome the impediments of a booming economy and a lack of international conflict, imagine what the voters of 2001 should be able to accomplish.