I was working in the attorney general’s office as an assistant attorney general in 1973 when the Republicans passed same-day voter registration, allowing voters to register to vote on Election Day. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Elden Shute, R-Farmington, who had served as deputy secretary of state.

The vote was unanimous because everyone, Democrats and Republicans alike, thought it important to make it as easy as possible for Maine people to exercise their fundamental constitutional right to vote. It was a proud moment, representing our proud bipartisan tradition of working together to expand and protect the people’s constitutional rights.

Same-day voter registration has been working well for almost 40 years. Maine elections have been conducted with integrity and with some of the highest rates of voter participation in the country. There have only been two cases of voter fraud during that time.

When the federal government passed the Help America Vote Act, Maine was exempt from some of federal mandates because of same-day voter registration and our success in making voting widely accessible to all populations.

LD 1376, backed by current Secretary of State Charles Summers, would roll back the fundamental right to vote by eliminating same-day voter registration. It would require voters to register to vote ahead of time.

The proposal is a terrible idea that could reduce voter participation in democracy. Common sense alone indicates that if people have to register ahead of time, inevitably some people will be prevented from voting.

The AARP and Disability Rights Center testified about how difficult it is for seniors and people with disabilities to make the trip to register in person ahead of time and then vote on Election Day.

The League of Young Voters testified about the impact on young people who are highly mobile. Academic research supports commonsense and the testimony of these groups. CalTech and MIT published a study in 2009 that suggested same-day voter registration is the single best way to increase broad voter participation in elections.

So why on earth would the Legislature want to make it harder for average Mainers to vote?

The secretary of state asserts that this is necessary to make it easier for clerks to administer elections. I have the highest regard for those clerks, who do a wonderful job running Maine’s elections, and I have never before heard any complaint by local clerks that same-day registration causes any problems.

So it’s upsetting to hear a politician arguing that people should sacrifice their  fundamental constitutional rights for some unsubstantiated bureaucratic convenience.

The constitutional rights of the many should never be sacrificed for the preference of the few. But it’s even more upsetting to find that the clerks testified at the public hearing on LD 1376 that they would be comfortable keeping same-day voter registration.

We certainly shouldn’t pursue such a dramatic change to the voting process if the clerks don’t even fully support it.

The fact is, clerks will have to deal with angry voters on Election Day who have always assumed they can update their address or register to vote on Election Day. And there may well be some angry voters who have been mistakenly purged from the rolls who can no longer correct that mistake on Election Day.

Clerks may also have to deal with angry taxpayers. LD 1376 and a companion bill, LD 199 (which would mandate a photo ID to vote), places huge financial costs on municipalities.

By eliminating same-day voter registration, the state of Maine and municipalities must comply with the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act. Compliance with HAVA means a new provisional balloting system that clerks will have to offer with a complicated federally mandated process for ballot verification and processing of these new provisional ballots.

It is difficult to imagine that the new federal process of provisional balloting will be less of a burden on clerks or better for the integrity of our system.

In these difficult economic times, the Legislature needs to focus its time, its energy and taxpayer dollars on real problems.

There’s no fiscal note on LD 1376, curiously, despite the complicated new requirements for municipalities and the need for public education and outreach to make sure that thousands of voters aren’t disenfranchised in the next election.

There is a fiscal note on LD 199 of a few hundred thousand, but other states have spent literally millions of dollars to implement similar programs. In these tough economic times, there are not millions of dollars to spend on making it more difficult for Mainers to vote.

Maine should be proud of the efforts that began with Republicans in 1973 to improve its voting system and make voter participation easier in important elections. These laws have worked, and Maine now has the third-highest level of voter participation in the country.

The Legislature should leave well enough alone and reject both LD 1376 and LD 199.

John Paterson is president of the Maine Civil Liberties Union