Maine has lost her voice and her place in the presidential elections. The Democrat-controlled House voted in support of Maine adopting a national popular vote stance during presidential elections.

This sounds great at first. It makes sense that the majority of the people should democratically elect their public servants. The issue arrives quite deviously when you read the fine print. The national popular vote bill states that Maine will award her four electoral votes to the candidate that receives the majority of the national vote, not the majority of the state’s vote. Maine has a population of 1.39 million people. The U.S. has seven cities alone with a higher population than Maine. This means no matter how Mainers vote, an out-of-state city or two that votes differently than our state will sway our electoral votes in their favor. It would only take one city to allow non-Americans to vote and Maine would be lost forever with our elections reduced to a patriotic formality of zero consequence.

As Mainers, we need to pay attention to the games each of our political parties try to pull. We need clean and fair elections. National popular voting and even ranked choice voting are both election tampering and interference. Our leaders have lied to us so many times that no one is shocked by it anymore. Is this the way life should be?

Nicolas Hamlin
West Bath