November 09, 2011 11:15 PM UTC

Ohio, Mississippi, Maine--A Bridge Too Far

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• by: Colorado Pols

Summarizing ballot initiatives around the country yesterday, the Washington Post reports:

Ohioans voted Tuesday to repeal a Republican-backed law that restricted collective bargaining for public workers, while Mississippi voters blocked an amendment that would have defined a fertilized egg as a person.

The union victory in Ohio and the defeat for the “personhood” amendment in Mississippi highlighted an off-year election that was defined by ballot measures…

Gov. John Kasich (R) took office in January vowing to curb unions’ power. But unions recoiled when a bill he spearheaded curbed the rights of 350,000 public workers – including firefighters and police officers – to negotiate over benefits, equipment and other issues.

The backlash against the law began as soon as Kasich signed it into law in March. By August, when the governor asked for a compromise with unions, it was too late.

…Opponents said the [Mississippi] measure would have criminalized birth control, affected in vitro fertilization practices and could even have led to physicians declining to perform chemotherapy on pregnant women for fear of legal repercussions.

In the end, those concerns won out, with the amendment trailing 57 percent to 43 percent in the 60 percent of precincts reporting.

After a horrible election for Democrats and their allies in Ohio in 2010, the repeal of Gov. John Kasich’s anti-labor legislation will serve as a badly-needed rallying point in that state next year–while in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has to be nervous seeing these results, and Wisconsin Democrats feel their campaign to recall Walker in 2012 got a significant boost. In Mississippi, the defeat of the so-called “personhood” initiative may (or may not) take the wind out of the sails of nationwide proponents, though either way it’s going to make proponent Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign Q&A sessions quite interesting in the coming weeks and months.

But there’s one other election win for Democrats and progressives yesterday receiving less attention, in our opinion wrongly–from the great state of Maine, the Bangor Daily News reports:

By a relatively wide margin, Mainers on Tuesday overturned a recently passed law that would have ended a 38-year-old practice of allowing voters to register on Election Day.

Question 1 asked: “Do you want to reject the section of Chapter 399 of the Public Laws of 2011 that requires new voters to register to vote at least two business days prior to an election?”

With more than three-quarters of the state’s precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, the yes side was leading 60 percent to 40 percent and had declared victory. The yes side was prevailing in every county, with especially lopsided results in Portland and Bangor…

“Maine voters sent a clear message: No one will be denied a right to vote,” said Shenna Bellows, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. “Voters in small towns and big cities voted to protect our constitutional right.”

Lance Dutson, director of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, which has been involved with the No on 1 campaign, said he expected a closer vote but conceded the race shortly before 10 p.m.

“I’m pleased at the discussion we helped to initiate around making our elections more secure,” he said… [Pols emphasis]

The story of Maine’s Question 1 campaign, repealing a Republican-supported restriction on Election Day registration in that state, has striking parallels to the ongoing battle in Colorado over “illegal voters,” and the push by Secretary of State Scott Gessler to purge “investigate.” Maine’s Question 1 gained traction after a high-profile investigation, demanded by Maine Republicans, of 206 “possibly fraudulent voters” concluded in September uncovering no fraud whatsoever.

Of the many elections going on last night, we would speculate that Maine’s Question 1 is the election Gessler cared most about. And we seriously doubt he liked the outcome.