Late October. The World Series. The NBA on strike.

Leaves pile up in the yard. The wind spreads debris everywhere, windows close for the winter, days shorten, as views widen and upland game flee skillful hunters in the woods of western Maine.

Campaign signs sprout like dandelions in ditches and lawns.

It’s election season. This year, voters are being asked to defend their right to register and vote, to have their voices heard.

In the wider world, people are moving, more than ever before. They are losing their homes. They are losing their jobs. Unemployment is high, foreclosures up. People adapt and move if they must.

Some hold two and three jobs just to pay for food, shelter and insurance.

Seniors leave their longtime homes for the protection of assisted living and nursing care in neighboring towns.

And on Election Day, these Mainers show up to cast a vote. It is their heritage, a tradition, a fundamental right.

No state is prouder of the faithfulness of its voters, their adherence to civic duty that places Mainers at the top of the nation in voter turnout.

But some have accused these good people of misuse of the system and, under the guise of voter fraud, they are asking Maine citizens to vote against their own interests and reverse a system that has worked extraordinarily well for nearly 40 years by allowing voters to register and vote on Election Day.

Asking people to vote against their fundamental rights in order to fix a non-existent problem is like changing the engine in your car because you might have a little rust on the fender.

But these fear-mongers would have people believe that thousands of Maine voters simply do not know what they are doing, that some phantom lawbreakers are making everyone else’s vote less “secure.”

For 21 years as a law enforcement official, I remained by my phone every Election Day to answer questions and discuss any possible violations of the law.

The phone rarely rang. Other than well-meaning folks wearing buttons too close to the polls, no serious suggestions of crimes ever materialized. Our clerks, with the help of statewide computers, do a good job.

And our voters are fundamentally honest.

As attorney general, I prosecuted the only two election violations in the past 40 years — people who were caught and charged with serious felonies because of our modern-day data systems. We sent a message that under the current system, anyone thinking of cheating will be caught.

Surely, there is no reason to change our system of voting, disenfranchising thousands of honest people, because of these two isolated cases.

In many years, as a candidate for public office I stood at the polls across the state, in the long hours of June and into some very cold nights in November. People were always happy to be there, to see their neighbors, exchange news, share a smile.

Always, there were voters who had forgotten to re-register after a necessary move, or new voters arriving with pride to register for the very first time. Always, they were grateful for the ability to register on Election Day, with a piece of mail showing their address, casting their ballot securely.

We are people who value our civic responsibilities.

The right to vote — the most fundamental right of our democracy, that great equalizer between the haves and have-nots, the rural and the urban, the old and the young — is too precious for anyone to turn back the clock 40 years, and to turn away that long line of eager innocent voters who want only to have some say in their government.

Question 1 is not about fraud. It’s about fundamental freedom. It is about the plumber, the waitress, the store clerk and the furnace repairwoman who work two or three jobs to pay the bills and who cannot take time off to hunt down a part-time clerk (also working two jobs) in order to register the week before Election Day.

Next autumn, we cannot leave these Maine voters out in the cold.

Like the 70,000 citizens who signed petitions to preserve this precious freedom, I too say, “Leave our rights alone!”

I will vote “yes” on Question 1 to restore the right of all Mainers to register and vote on Election Day.

Janet Mills is a former district attorney, three-term legislator and attorney general of the state of Maine. She lives in Farmington.