“(T)here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” – Donald Rumsfeld

This legislative session’s senate bill 1 deals with the state’s absentee ballot application process. It is important to keep in mind there are two parts of the absentee ballot process, 1) an application is sent in by a voter asking to receive an absentee ballot and, 2) the voter receives, votes, and returns the absentee ballot.

As currently written, senate bill 1 would outlaw anyone from returning an absentee ballot application other than voter himself or herself. A violation would be a class A misdemeanor. There are exceptions built in for emergency medical situations and for voters with disabilities.

In addition, providing absentee applications to voters with prefilled voter information would be illegal. An example of this would be an organization mailing out absentee applications to voters’ home addresses with the voters’ names and addresses already filled in on the application. Furthermore, the bill creates felony charges for anyone to pay for or to be paid to distribute, assist with, or deliver a voter’s absentee application.

When considering any new policy, the first question asked should be is there a significant problem here, and will the legislation solve or improve it? We hear about voter fraud all the time, but there is generally no evidence it takes place on any wide scale.

AL.com’s John Sharp reported, “According to former Secretary of State John Merrill, during his term in office from 2015-2023, there were only eight instances of voter fraud that led to a conviction, with six of them having to do with the absentee election procedures and administration.”

The obvious issue with absentee voting is it can occur outside the more controlled environment of a polling place making it easier for someone to influence how you vote through intimidation, bribery or exploiting your trust.

However, should this bill pass, it will not really change anything on that front. Laws already are in place to prevent voters from being intimidated to vote for or against candidates or issues. Laws are also already in place outlawing a voter from accepting payments or benefits to vote.

This brings us to the third option of exploitation of voters.

We often hear stories of the elderly or incapacitated in nursing homes being manipulated or outright having a ballot cast for them without their knowledge. If that is what we are concerned about, then maybe we should look into more direct ways to deal with this issue instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater to try to prevent it.

In Maine state law requires election clerks to schedule a day and time for absentee voting to take place in long-term-care facilities and then show up to run absentee voting in those facilities. Instituting something like this will certainly come with a price tag, but if the legislature is serious as it claims to be about maintaining election integrity, maybe it is worth the cost to directly address a possible problem.

This returns us to the question of would senate bill 1 bill ferret out and prevent any more instances of fraud?

While it would be untrue to say people are never intimidated, bribed or exploited for their vote, again, this bill is only dealing with the application process which takes place prior to a voter receiving an absentee ballot on which to vote.

I do believe the section of the bill outlawing organizations from sending partially completed absentee ballots is beneficial as this practice could cause confusion among some voters. I do not see it preventing many election violations, though.

Moreover, the absentee ballot application requires a witness signature and a copy of a photo ID. Should someone sign as a witness, it would seem to be a person the voter trusted. If the witness then returned the application to the local election official for a voter, it appears that person will be guilty of a crime.

Making it a crime for someone to return their neighbor’s or even their spouse’s absentee application seems over the top and a potential headache for local absentee election managers when it would inevitably happen.

The most pronounced effect of senate bill 1 will be adding more complexity to the voting process while whipping political party bases into a frenzy which tends to be some legislators’ favorite mode of policymaking.