Question 1’s mental somersault requirement

Included in a page of letters to the editor of this newspaper on Thursday morning as part of the last hurrah before next Tuesday’s election was one that stood out for its brevity and common sense.

“Mental agility shouldn’t be a prerequisite for casting a ballot,” suggested letter writer John Lyman of Orono in commenting on the wording of Question 1 on the ballot, which deals with repealing the state’s relatively new anti-discrimi-nation law.

The controversial proposition – seemingly cobbled together by some mischievous wordsmith specializing in trick questions to keep the electorate on its toes – is this: “Do you want to reject the new law that would protect people from discrimination in employment, housing, education, public accommodations and credit based on their sexual orientation?”

The wording of the question “is less easy for voters than it could be,” Lyman wrote, in the understatement of the week. “To keep the anti-discrimination law in place it requires a voter to vote no; to reject the law one must vote yes. It would be more straightforward in writing a referendum to keep the yes votes together and the no votes together so voters don’t have to do a mental somersault to [accomplish] what they intend. …”

One could fairly picture harried voters – long grown weary of having to vote “yes” on referendum questions to get a negative result, or “no” for a positive outcome – muttering “Amen, brother,” or its generic equivalent upon reading Lyman’s letter.

Face it: If forced to do mental somersaults in the secrecy of the voting booth before marking our ballots, a good many of us whose mental agility ain’t what it used to be (if, in fact, it ever was), will botch the job.

We’ll guess wrong and then, post-election, when too late we’ve smartened up, go whining to anyone who will listen, “I know I believe I understood what I thought the ballot question may have been. But I’m not sure the ballot counters realized that whichever way I voted I meant the opposite. …”

My favorite instance of the crowd in power jury-rigging a referendum question to accommodate its biases occurred many years ago in a small Knox County town when I was a young reporter toiling in the news-paper’s Rockland bureau.

The referendum question itself – something along the line of, “Do you favor an ordinance allowing the sale of malt liquor after sundown on odd-numbered days of the week?” – was straightforward enough. It was the not-so-subtle nontraditional placement of the “No” box ahead of the “Yes” box on the ballot that signaled voters what the “correct” vote should be.

History does not record how many good burghers voted “No” when they meant “Yes,” or vice-versa; does not show how many were unable to complete the mental somersault required to produce the vote they intended. Probably a fair number. Suffice to say the “No” vote prevailed, to no one’s surprise.

When I had the temerity to ask a town official how come they had placed the checkoff boxes in what my friends up in The County might call a “bass-ackwards” position she looked at me like I had just dropped in from another galaxy. “Well, duh, you numbhead. Because we could,” was the distinct message the look conveyed.

The battle over the wording of a referendum ballot question is part and parcel of the citizen initiative pro-cess, often degenerating into a Clintonesque argument amongst lawyers about what the meaning of “is” is.

Sometimes the faction responsible for an issue going to a vote wants the question worded so vaguely it would embarrass even a Philadelphia lawyer specializing in the Machiavellian duplicities of Doublespeak 101. Sometimes it suits the purpose to just plain flat-out ask the question with no attempt to lead the voter to the proper answer, novel though that approach may be.

Whatever the wording, the Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s Office, which has jurisdiction in such matters, can likely count on some interest group charging that it is being forced to play with the linguistic deck stacked against it.

Question 1 on Tuesday’s ballot may not include the brazen subliminal nudge of a “No” box placed before the “Yes” box. But, as John Lyman has suggested, its wording might have been made easier for voters who find the performance of mental gymnastics in the voting booth a formidable task.

Something like “Do you want to retain the state’s anti-discrimination law in order to drive the Christian Civic League of Maine’s executive director, Michael Heath, completely nuts? (Yes) (No),” might better have cut to the chase.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.