Ballots befuddle Mount Desert board Absentee votes delayed release of results

MOUNT DESERT – If there is any lasting result from the municipal votes the town held last week, it may be a lesson in how not to conduct a referendum.

By a 2-1 tally, the Mount Desert Board of Selectmen finally agreed Wednesday to release the results of last week’s nonbinding local referendum questions. One was about pursuing a deer management plan, and the other was about changing the town’s fiscal year.

Mount Desert officials had been criticized for not releasing the Nov. 7 municipal voting results earlier, but they were concerned about absentee votes. They had not mailed out the referendum questions with the statewide ballot packets they sent to 195 absentee voters, and when some of these voters said they still wanted to weigh in on the local questions, the town called Maine Municipal Association for advice.

MMA, selectmen said, told them that if they were going to mail out local referendum ballots after the election, they should withhold the preliminary results so as not to prejudice the pending votes.

The selectmen acknowledged Wednesday that they have been flummoxed by the feedback they have received about how the referendums have been handled.

“I’m getting a lot of interesting legal opinions on this,” Selectman Jeff Smith said to about 20 residents who showed up Wednesday to see what the board would decide. “This got murkier and murkier as we got into it.”

The selectmen suggested, however, that because the local referendums were nonbinding, they were really just straw polls. No one would be disenfranchised from their rights as citizens if they did not participate in the polls, they said.

Worried about possible legal action if they didn’t release the referendum results, Selectman Rick Savage and fellow board member Kathleen Branch voted to do so immediately. Smith, favoring further polling of absentee voters, was against it.

After the selectmen’s vote, Smith announced the referendum results by reading them out loud to the small crowd.

But wait! Didn’t they need a majority vote of the board, which has five members, before they could decide to release the results, asked local resident George Peckham? Even though two selectmen were absent, he said, they needed three to vote in favor of the measure and only two had done so. Maybe they should scrap the whole thing, he suggested.

The board initially discounted Peckham’s concern about how it needed to vote, but looked a little more worried after Town Manager Michael MacDonald produced some paperwork that indicated Peckham might be right.

Quick, Smith suggested, let’s reconsider the vote. I’ll change mine to be in favor of releasing the results if we reconsider, he said.

So they voted to reconsider, and then voted 3-0 to release the results they had already released.

The crowd, somewhat appeased, got up to leave.

“Don’t disenfranchise us again,” local resident Richard Crawford scolded the board as he stood from his seat.

Walking out of the town office a few moments later, Crawford told a reporter, “I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

And the actual referendum results? Only some of them were obvious to the board Wednesday night.

Most of the approximately 950 residents who voted in the nonbinding referendums favored changing the town’s fiscal year, the results indicated.

As for the two-part question about pursuing a deer management plan, Smith initially had announced results that suggested most voters were opposed to the concept. At the end of the meeting, however, after the residents had left, he acknowledged he had misread the tallies.

Upon further examination, town officials agreed, it appeared most voters favor pursuing some sort of plan. The count indicated 535 people support pursuing a plan, and 434 people oppose it.

But not everyone who said they favor drafting a plan supported the idea of allowing a hunt. According to Town Clerk Kim Parady, 694 people indicated they are opposed to having a recreational deer hunt in Mount Desert.

“This is as clear as mud,” Branch said, pointing to the list of voting results.

Savage, the town’s first selectman, said he was willing to admit that the town should have done a better job in preparing for the referendums and in releasing with the results.

“I’ll accept responsibility,” he said about the overall confusion. “Yeah, OK, it’s been mishandled.”