MEXICO – For 90 minutes Tuesday night, 25 Mexico residents discussed a currently stalemated petitions drive for secret-ballot voting at town meetings.
Members of the Mexico Taxpayers Group convened the meeting to talk about the petition’s status, grow support and decide upcoming strategies.
Group leader Monique Aniel, an outspoken proponent of secret balloting and the petition, said they’ll give selectmen one more chance to put the measure on the June town meeting ballot.
“We will go to the next selectmen’s meeting and ask them to give us a timetable, and say we need an answer by the end of January,” she said.
“If that fails, we have to get together again, get a legal opinion, write another petition and get 107 signatures,” Aniel added.
Four hundred signatures were gathered by petitioner Marjorie Smith on Election Day to allow people to vote in the privacy of the voting booth on the day of municipal elections, rather than by a show of hands at the previous day’s town meeting.
At the last two board meetings, selectmen and Town Manager John Madigan have said that the petition isn’t legal, because it wasn’t written as an article on which to be voted at a referendum.
In bold print, the document states, “Petition to allow the voting on town budget by secret ballot rather than by current show of hands.” Below that is a list of statements, which town officials say are opinions about why people were signing the document.
Selectmen agreed to take it under advisement, research the issue, then decide in April whether or not to put it on the ballot.
Aniel said Tuesday night that April is too late, because ballots have to be printed 45 days before town meeting to allow absentee voting.
“There is a time constraint, because if they decide in April that they’re not going to do it, then we’ve lost a year,” she said.
Reading from a Maine Municipal Association opinion about the petition’s status, Aniel said MMA stated that the petition does not require any official response from selectmen.
“They can ignore it or do as it requests,” she said. Because of the latter caveat, Aniel said that means the petition is official.
“It says in this legal opinion, Yes, you can do what you want.’ So, where’s the beef?” she asked.
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