A campaign embezzlement scandal has now cost a Maine state Representative not one, but two jobs on the public payroll.

Two weeks ago, GOP state Rep. David Burns resigned his position on the town of Alfred’s Board of Selectmen, after the Maine Ethics Commission found Burns guilty of, quote, “mind-boggling” ethics violations and referred the matter for criminal prosecution:

Ethics commission chairman Walter McKee, during the November hearing, called Burns’ actions “mind-boggling.”

“I certainly have never seen anything at this level in terms of severity,” said McKee at the hearing.

As well as finding Burns guilty of violating campaign finance laws, the ethics commission referred the matter to the attorney general’s office for possible prosecution.

This week, the second shoe fell for Rep. Burns, who elected to resign his seat in the Maine House once it became apparent that criminal prosecution was unavoidable. House Minority Leader Emily Cain stressed the seriousness of the charges and the real damage they could do to Maine’s unique system of clean elections:

“The Clean Elections system is not an ATM for lawmakers and it shouldn’t be treated that way,” Cain said. “The system has been effective in keeping special interests out of elections and any abuse of it must be addressed swiftly.”

She added, “If Burns was a member of my caucus, I would have asked him to resign immediately once the ethics commission found him in violation of ethics law and the matter was referred to the attorney general for a criminal investigation.”

Rep. Burns’ alleged misdeeds might have gone unnoticed had his campaign finance reports not been randomly selected for post-election auditing. Once they were, certain discrepancies immediately caught ethics watchdogs’ attention.

His reports listed mileage reimbursements (paid to himself) for driving 4,289 miles – which is the rough equivalent of driving from Burns’ Alfred, Maine home to Moscow. That distance also “significantly exceeds the claim of any other House candidate,” according to the Ethics Commission, including candidates with districts far larger than Burns’ 20-mile-across 138th District.

Ethics Commission investigators dug deeper, and they quickly “determined that Rep. Burns spent at least $2,500 of public funds for personal purposes and that expenditures totaling at least $1,295 were falsely reported in his campaign finance reports.” As a Clean Elections candidate, those funds originally came from the taxpayers, as part of the Maine Clean Elections Act, which makes Burns’ alleged actions even more egregious.

Burns’ 138th district – which he won by fewer than 200 votes in 2010 – will likely be filled by a special election.

[h/t Dirigo Blue]

The GOP war on voting rages on. 

One of last Tuesday’s big Democratic wins against partisan GOP overreach was Mainers’ rebuke of the new Republican law ending same-day voter registration. With voters’ approval of Question 1, Maine citizens may again register and vote on the same day, as they had for nearly 40 years prior to the recent GOP assault on voting rights. 

Less than a week after Maine voters resoundingly rejected Republican efforts to restrict ballot box access, the state GOP is launching its next offensive: voter ID legislation. 

The Maine GOP’s newest attack on voting rights is also a rehash of a fight that played out earlier this year. The voter ID bill (LD 199) passed Maine’s Republican-controlled House but failed in the state Senate. The bill’s sponsor has announced plans to resurrect it in the 2012 legislative session and insists that the measure is necessary to curb “voter fraud” in Maine. 

Maine has reported two cases of such fraud in 38 years. 

Republican lawmakers in Maine seem to be in profound denial of the strong message sent by voters last Tuesday. 

House Speaker Rep. Robert Nutting, R-Oakland, said last week that the discussion over voter ID should be different than the bill that repealed EDR [Election Day Registration]. Nutting, the lead sponsor of the voter-defeated EDR bill, said it was too early to draw any conclusions from last week's referendum. 

Looks like we can expect Maine Republicans to continue to push their extreme, demonstrably out-of-touch agenda into the next year. 

Speaking of next year, it seems as though Ohio’s new restrictive voting law is eligible for an SB5-style “recall.” As we’ve previously noted, this law 

• Cuts the early voting period by more than half: instead of 35 days, voters will only be able to cast ballots on 12 of the 17 days prior to the election
• Eliminates early voting on Sundays
• Permits early voting on Saturdays from only 8 a.m. to noon
• Cuts early voting by mail from 35 days to 21
• Eliminates the weeklong period during which voters could register and cast ballots at the same time (“Golden Week”)
• Prohibits boards of elections from mailing absentee ballot request forms without receiving specific requests (forms are currently mailed to all registered voters)
• Prohibits boards of elections from paying return postage to encourage completion of absentee voter forms
• Eliminates local control, preventing boards of elections from extending poll hours and taking other previously permissible measures to prevent long lines and other issues seen in the 2004 elections  

(Fun walk down memory lane: Just after the bill was passed, reports surfaced that the GOP state Representative who sponsored it had been arrested for a DUI on Easter weekend in the company of a young woman who was not his wife or daughter and had tested positive for alcohol and Viagra. The legislator later resigned.) 

When voting rights supporters began the petition process to overturn the law with a referendum, the law’s provisions were suspended. Ohio Democrats seem to have collected the required number of signatures, and once they’re certified by the Secretary of State, the law will be placed on the ballot in 2012 for possible repeal. The law’s restrictive measures won't be in effect to suppress turnout for that vote… and maybe they never will.

Democrats’ Election Night 2011 just keeps getting better.

You’ve already heard about Democrats’ epic wins tonight in Ohio, Maine, and Iowa.

Victory in a Wisconsin Assembly special keeps Democratic momentum in that state going.

Despite aggressive GOP spending, Democrats expanded our majority in the New Jersey Assembly.

Arizona voters responded to Gov. Brewer’s recent redistricting power-grab by recalling tea party leader and GOP state Sen. Russell Pearce.

Michigan voters recalled a notoriously anti-teacher Republican state Representative.

And despite spending millions and millions of dollars on the effort, the GOP failed to take the majority in the Virginia state Senate.

Democrats even kept the Governor’s mansion in Kentucky.

Well, we’re not done yet.

Today we learned we can add a Washington special election to the Democratic win column.

Democratic state Rep. Sharon Wylie won the seat to which she was appointed earlier this year, soundly defeating her well-known GOP opponent.

This big night for Democrats is more than a sign that the GOP wave of 2010 has receded.

Voters are rebuking GOP candidates and policies all over the country. Republicans exploited their opportunities to legislate by forcing extreme policies through their statehouses, and voters aren’t standing for it. Even millions of dollars in GOP spending can’t obscure the truth:

In 2011 and 2012, Republicans just aren’t a sound investment. 

DLCC Applauds Return of Maine Same-Day Voter Registration

Passage of Question 1 a Victory for Voting Rights

Washington, DC - With 186 of 600 precincts reporting, same-day voter registration has been reinstated in Maine as voters approved with 59 percent of the vote a People’s Veto of the GOP-authored law that ended the practice. Michael Sargeant, Executive Director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, issued the following statement regarding the successful restoration of this voting practice. 

“Tonight’s defeat of the Maine GOP’s new suppressive voting law is a substantial victory for voting rights and a rejection of Republicans’ ongoing efforts to limit democracy,” said Sargeant. “Maine voters have already gone to the polls repeatedly this year to deliver Democratic victories in special elections. Mainers have now also delivered a direct rebuke of one of the most reprehensible laws the state GOP rammed through the legislature.

“This is only the latest string of rebukes of the GOP’s out-of-touch, anti-middle class agendas in states this year. Especially after tonight's victory for working families in Ohio, these wins should put Republicans everywhere on notice: there is a price to pay for right-wing extremism and partisan overreach.”

Since taking over a majority of the country’s state legislatures in January, statehouse Republicans have launched repeated and continuous assaults on voting rights. 

We’ve known for some time that at least 38 states have introduced legislation that would effectively restrict voters’ access to the ballot box. Twelve of those states have already enacted suppressive measures, and more may do so as state legislative sessions continue. 

We’ve also had an idea of the impact these laws will have on the electorate, but much of the available data up to this point has been five or more years old. 

No longer: 

Restrictive voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center [for Justice at New York University School of Law]. That's a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections. 

This study breaks down the affected voters by type of law, such as voter ID laws, anti-voter registration drive laws, and laws curtailing early voting periods and absentee voting opportunities. 

Speaking of absentee voting, Virginians may want to start practicing their penmanship if they want their absentee votes to be counted by the state’s GOP-appointed elections board. 

The Republican-controlled State Board of Elections withdrew one set of rules governing absentee ballots - they gave election officials more leeway to count the ballots of voters who made mistakes filling them out - and substituted them with less-flexible guidelines…. 

Removed from the current state absentee ballot regulation is language in the previous version that made it clear that illegible voter or witness signatures on a ballot wouldn't invalidate it, and a catch-all paragraph that specified ballots wouldn't be tossed if a voter's identity could be otherwise confirmed by election officials. 

Fun fact: In the 2008 election, 13 percent of Virginia’s voters cast absentee ballots. How many of those would have been disqualified for having “illegible” signatures? 

And thus Virginia joins the ignoble ranks of GOP-governed states taking unprecedented measures to prevent citizens from exercising their right to vote—and to have those votes counted. 

The effects of all of these voting restrictions will be staggering, particularly on the elections of the very state legislators who are working so hard to make voting so difficult. 

Consider that in 2010, more than 90 state legislative races across the country were won or lost by fewer than 100 votes. Two states where newly GOP legislative chambers passed restrictive voting measures (Ohio and Maine) had sixty-four 2010 statehouse races decided by 500 votes or fewer. Two of the Wisconsin recall elections this summer were decided by only about 2000 votes. 

Even a few thousand uncast or uncounted votes have the potential to tip majority control of a legislative chamber from one party to the other… as well as affect races all the way up the ballot. 

Republicans understand that as surely as we do. And sometimes they let the true motivations behind their suppressive voting laws slip. 

Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers flatly claimed voting was “not a right” during debate over a photo ID bill (a statement he later partially walked back). So, too, did Florida state Sen. Mike Bennett in a similar debate. Republican legislators and party leaders in Wisconsin, Maine and New Hampshire said all sorts of disparaging things about the civic qualifications of college students in the process of seeking to keep them from voting on campus. 

Statehouse Republicans across the country seem to feel that legitimate means of influencing elections are insufficient to maintain a right-wing domination of state governments. Their voter suppression tactics are a reflection of conservatives’ pathetic desperation. The GOP war on voting is simultaneously an assault on democracy and an outrageous power grab. Its effects are far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. And it’s far from over.

For 38 years, Mainers enjoyed exercising their right to vote with an ease known only by Americans in seven other states. Maine law permitted citizens to register to vote the same day they cast ballots… until this year. 

Republicans in the Maine legislature passed LD 1376 this summer, and the state’s GOP governor happily signed the measure ending Election Day voter registration. The bill also bans registering and in-person “absentee” voting the two business days before an election. 

An effort is underway to repeal this suppressive voting measure at the ballot box this November (ironic much?). The group behind it, Protect Maine Votes, just unearthed some intriguing information on the civic participation history of some of the Republicans supporting LD 1376. 

At least nine GOP legislators who voted to ban same-day voter registration and reduce the number of days available for registering to vote and casting early ballots have themselves registered or voted within the window now forbidden by state law. Even Republican Governor Paul LePage registered to vote in Maine within the now-illegal period.

Among the list of legislators who voted to change Maine’s registration laws but have registered within the time that is now illegal are: Sens. Garrett Mason and Lois Snowe-Mello, and Reps. Bernard Ayotte, Eleanor Espling, Amy Volk, Patrick Flood, David Richardson, David Johnson and Aaron Libby.

Voting records for nine other members of the Legislature who voted to kill same-day registration show they also registered on or near Election Day, but those records could not be confirmed independently by Tuesday…

In addition to numerous members of the House and Senate whose registration would not have been allowed under current law, Governor Paul LePage, who signed the bill eliminating same-day registration, registered to vote in Waterville on the Monday before Election Day in 1982.

Maine Republicans supported and passed this bill for insubstantial reasons like “preserving the integrity of the voter” and supposed (and since disproved) student voter fraud. But many who worked to make voting more difficult clearly had no problem with using the existing system themselves.

Inventing reasons to eradicate elections practices that have worked for Mainers for almost 40 years is the sort of right-wing extremism Maine voters have rejected at the polls in two special elections over the summer. This November, Mainers will have the chance to deliver a direct rebuke of one of the most reprehensible laws the Republicans rammed through the legislature this year.

Democrats have won yet another special election. 

The most recent victory came last night in New Hampshire, as Democrats picked up their third House seat from the GOP in that chamber this year. 

Democratic Representative-elect Peter Leishman won the previously Republican seat in a “moderate Republican bastion that is home to [US] Rep. Charles Bass,” according to the Union Leader. His Republican opponent was endorsed by the state Senate President (whose home district overlaps this House district) and the House Speaker, who reportedly was heavily involved in this race. And despite the fact that registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats in the district, Leishman defeated his GOP opponent by the largest margin of any New Hampshire special election so far this year. 

One special election pickup is an example, two could be coincidence, but three is certainly a trend—a trend of rejecting the GOP’s attacks on public employees, voter ID measures, attempts to deny some workers even the minimum wage… the list goes on. 

This trend isn’t confined to New Hampshire. Yesterday’s win comes on the heels of a Democratic sweep of six New York Assembly special elections last week, which capped off a summer that saw a considerable list of Democratic victories. In Wisconsin, Democrats not only held all of their Senate seats targeted by the GOP for recalls, but also added two new Democrats to their caucus. Democrats picked up an additional seat in the Wisconsin Assembly. Democrats also won special elections in Maine’s Senate and House. 

This trend of Democratic successes in statehouses has emerged as conservative overreach by GOP leadership in these states reached a crescendo. After a winter and spring of GOP lawmakers attacking middle-class values and pushing right-wing agendas, Democrats began picking up Republican legislative seats. 

As recent statehouse shenanigans in Pennsylvania help demonstrate, Republicans seem unlikely to pull back on their extreme policy pushes any time soon. But this clear trend of Democratic successes should put GOP lawmakers on notice: voters are repeatedly and thoroughly rejecting their brand of right-wing extremism.

The Wisconsin recalls are over, Congress is back in session, and some may think that state legislative politics is SO yesterday. 

But you and I know better. So here’s a rundown of what’s popping. 

In this week’s edition of The Nation, John Nichols explains why things are looking pretty good for Democrats in statehouses. 

There’s a confidence level on display in the states that goes far beyond what is being heard in Washington these days. It is rooted in the fact that state-based Democrats have found winning issues in their fights to defend labor rights, public services and public education against a GOP austerity agenda that cuts taxes for billionaires and corporations while placing greater burdens on working families in a period of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. 

In New Hampshire, where Republicans scored unprecedented victories in 2010, the GOP is losing House seats in special elections that have turned on the question of whether legislators will override Democratic Governor John Lynch’s veto of an antilabor “right to work” law. 

In Maine, where Governor Paul LePage may well be the most extreme of the new Republican leaders, Democrats are not just winning special elections. They are seeing spikes of nearly 20 percent over the party’s 2010 vote totals for candidates who bluntly declare that they are determined to fight the LePage agenda, which
has extended so far as to attack child-labor protections. The national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee notes that Democrats are running on average nine points better than they did in the same districts in 2010. And the DLCC says they are “performing as well now as they were in [the 2008] election—and in fact winning additional seats lost in that election,” as was the case with the defeat of the two Wisconsin Republican senators who survived the Obama landslide. 

Read the full piece here. Check out our data on Democratic performance in special elections here. 

Meanwhile, the GOP war on voting has some fresh developments. Just today, the Maine Secretary of State certified a “People’s Veto” of the new law prohibiting the long-standing practice of Election Day voter registration. Until the GOP-controlled legislature decided to halt the practice this year, Mainers had been able to register to vote and cast ballots on the same day since 1973. Now citizens will have the opportunity to continue that practice by electing to overturn this restrictive voting law this
November. 

In New Hampshire, where the state Senate upheld the Democratic Governor’s veto of that state’s voter ID legislation on Wednesday, GOP state Rep. Kyle Tasker posted some (unrelated) reprehensible comments on the House Republicans’ Facebook page. 

On Tuesday night, Tasker wrote on the House Republican Caucus Facebook page that “When a police officer points his firearm that’s not gonna make me feel threatened? If I’ve been trained to respond to that with force am I justified in blowing a cop away because I’m quicker on the draw, and he already pointed his firearm at me? Police are just citizens with badges and all laws should apply equally.” 

The comment has since been removed, but a copy of the posting was given to WMUR. 

Rep. Tasker defended these comments as part of an “intellectual discussion” of a piece of legislation. Former law enforcement officers and current Democratic state Reps. Steve Shurtleff and Ray Gagnon blasted the comments as “appalling,” “insulting and disgusting.” 

Oklahoma GOP state Rep. Sally Kern (whose antics we’ve highlighted previously) is promoting her new book, The Stoning of Sally Kern, and doubling down on her claim that homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorist attacks – just in time for the 10^th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history. 

In an August 31 interview, she said: 

You know if you just look at it in practical terms, which has destroyed and ended the life of more people? Terrorism attack here in America or HIV/AIDS? In the last twenty years, fifteen to twenty years, we’ve had maybe three terrorist attacks on our soil with a little over 5,000 people regrettably losing their lives. In the same time frame, there have been hundreds of thousands who have died because of having AIDS. So which one’s the biggest threat? And you know, every day our young people, adults too, but especially our young people, are bombarded at school, in movies, in music, on TV, in the mall, in magazines, they’re bombarded with ‘homosexuality is normal and natural.’ It’s something they have to deal with every day. Fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day, and that’s what I mean. 

So there you have the good, the bad, and the ugly in statehouse politics this week. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment!

Another statehouse Democrat has claimed victory in a special election. 

Today’s win comes in Maine House District 121, a special election called to replace the Democratic winner of Maine’s last special in May. Democratic candidate Kim Monaghan-Derrig defeated the GOP’s Nancy Thompson. 

Representative-elect Monaghan-Derrig made it clear in her campaign she wasn’t running against another candidate; rather, she was taking a stand against the GOP’s extreme agenda and the Republican leadership pushing those right-wing policies. 

[Monaghan-Derrig] said she is opposed to the agenda of Gov. Paul LePage and questions its transparency when education funding was pushed through the Legislature at a late hour. 

"When you have (Essentials Programs and Services) funding being driven through at a late hour which results in the loss of $200,000 from the southern part of Maine to the northern part of Maine, why couldn't they have just done that during normal legislative hours?," she said. … 

As a member of the School Board, Monaghan-Derrig said she does not support the charter school legislation signed into law by LePage. She said she favors magnet schools over charter schools and would rather see an increase in professional development for teachers. … 

Monaghan-Derrig said she strongly opposes the repeal of same-day voter registration. She said it disenfranchises the elderly, the young, the disabled and young families. 

The newest member of Maine’s Democratic House Caucus made it clear she will be a progressive voice in legislature.

Monaghan-Derrig said she will work to encourage economic development through jobs, education, the environment and equal rights for all, including marriage equality, women's right to choose and voter rights.

"These are issues that are very sensitive to people and they feel very strongly about their rights," she said. …

"I think that I have a working knowledge of the state of Maine, it's geography, it's people, it's counties, and I'll be able to bring that understanding to Augusta," she said.

Other elections today may have higher billing, but this win is another in a growing series of critical events backing states away from the extreme right-wing, anti-middle class abyss.

Ever since Tea Party radicals took over the legislatures and state Republican Party structures in neighboring Maine and New Hampshire in 2010, both states’ residents have been bombarded with new, right-wing bills (each seemingly more extreme than the last).

But until the Maine GOP chairperson’s witch hunt against young voters ensnared the New Hampshire GOP House Speaker’s son, friendly fire between the two camps wasn’t a concern.

It is now.

[Brendan] O’Brien, who is from Mont Vernon, N.H., graduated from Bates College in May. At the tail end of his junior year in 2010, he ran for elective office in the Maine primary, seeking the District 73 seat representing Lewiston in the House of Representatives.

O’Brien's experience shows how the transient college population can get caught up in choosing where to vote. According to Lewiston city records, O’Brien registered as a Republican in June 2009 and voted that year in Lewiston.

He may also be registered to vote in New Hampshire, where he voted last November because he wanted to be among the Granite State residents casting votes for William O’Brien, who is Brendan O’Brien’s father. The elder O’Brien serves as speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

O’Brien’s voter registrations in both states appear to have been on the books simultaneously.

But what, exactly, prompted so much local interest in the younger O’Brien’s voter registration status?

Note that the Lewiston Sun Journel published its article just days after Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster publicly and shamefully accused 206 eligible Maine voters of the “crime” of exercising their constitutional rights. Local media, including the Bangor Daily News, soon blasted Webster’s antics:

“The simple fact that 206 people, here on ‘out of state tuition,’ are actually voting to decide who will represent our communities in the state Legislature ought to concern Mainers,” Mr. Webster said in a press release, written in all capital letters and replete with misspellings.

Actually, Mr. Webster, the U.S. Supreme Court — the ultimate interpreter of the U.S. Constitution — ruled in 1979 that college students are completely within their rights to vote where they attend school.

Mr. Webster’s evidence of fraud appears to be his combination of two lists that are not related and rely on completely different standards.

But all of this, ultimately, is a distraction from the real issue, on which Democrats in Maine and New Hampshire are in complete agreement. Every eligible voter should be able to vote. As New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesperson Harrell Kirstein put it in a statement:

“The problem isn’t college students exercising their right to vote, [it's] people like Speaker O’Brien pushing anti-American bills infringing on the right to vote.”

Well said.