When lawmakers in Maine, the safest state in the Republic, want to pass laws to replicate the states with the highest crime rates.
When lawmakers in Maine take an oath to uphold the State and Federal Constitution and then spend a whole legislative session and taxpayers’ monies questioning a Natural Born Right, which the Maine State Constitution guarantees emphatically “shall never be questioned!”
It is the traverse in the woods of ideology. The divergence in paths once aligned. It is here where the “one Nation” meets its impassable chasm, a void too deep and too far to bridge.
One path still holds to the ideal that was this Nation’s founding. The other moves away from that ideal, curling, meandering at times, but always moving back towards the old ideals of Europe that we left so long ago. Ghosts are calling through the mists of the abyss between us that ne’er we be twined.
The onslaught of anti-gun legislation, appointments, and rhetoric highlights the stark contrast in ideals, our paths. On the one, is the knowledge that the Constitution does not grant any of the Rights it delineates, but rather is the protector of said rights. On the other, is the perception that the document grants the citizens their rights and by extension the government it establishes.
A subtle difference and yet not. If a document grants you the rights of Liberty, then it can be amended to curtail such Liberty, and if its government is the administrator of those Liberties granted, then it can be used to police and revoke them. This fuels the rabid and persistent attempts by the Left to dismantle the 2nd Amendment.
To the Conservative, the document is the bulwark, the protector of the Liberties it acknowledges. These Liberties are inherent, stamped, wired into our DNA at conception. Whether it be through God, the universe, or evolutionary happenstance, Natural Born Rights are instinctive and irrefutable.
This is the chasm between us. One believes utopia attainable through the government of the citizen, the curtailment of Rights. The other refuses to surrender its Natural Born Right of self-defense to the greatest mass murderer in world history, government.
-Andy Torbett
Bruce Poliquin will, and must, continue his challenge to the Ranked Choice voting system and the Constitutionality of the results. He will, because it is his choice as a citizen of this Republic and he has the freedom to do so. He must, because he is a Representative of the voters in the 2nd Congressional District (CD2) who, 20,000 strong, voted against the RCV and feel disenfranchised by the results of the new voting system.
It bears repeating that those who decry the challenges to RCV as an effort to erode the voter’s confidence in the voting process spent millions in an effort to erode the voter’s confidence in the voting process in order to pass RCV. To one eligible citizen there is given one vote. That is the Constitution and, as Representative Poliquin took an oath to defend the Constitution, he is required by that oath to challenge this attack on the very foundation of our Republic.
In this light, the argument and subsequent mockery of Poliquin that he did not fully criticize the RCV during the election and that this somehow invalidates his challenge is at best irrelevant and at worst, laughable. The Representative is bound by his oaths of public servitude to his constituents, the integrity of this Republic, and the ideals set forth in the Constitution of the United States. Yet, he is, of course, free to violate these oaths, as some do, for personal ease and deflection of responsibility, but the erosion of the individual voting rights of the citizen will only continue.
No, Bruce Poliquin is bound to see this through, to finish this task. In so doing,perhaps, he can raise the awareness of the, too often, apathetic voter. Maybe there can arise enough passion to repeal this travesty.
-Andy Torbett
Political irony is on full display in Maine. The staple of many a politician, hypocrisy has now been foisted upon the voting process. Ranked Choice Voting, toddling mere months into it’s infancy, was found unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court for use in State elections, has now mired the state into the muck of necessary legal challenges into its Federal constitutionality, and media punditry has circled the wagons around their collective talking point that challenging RCV at the Federal level erodes the peoples’ confidence in the “institution” of voting, seemingly oblivious to the millions of dollars, and years of political spin, spent on ads, campaign mailings, and signature drives, all in a effort to erode the voters’ confidence in Maine’s already constitutionally established voting system.
Here, the time proven political ploy of accusing your opponent of the very thing to which you are guilty is so stark it cannot be veiled. Could it be that the so-called “erosion” of voter confidence is not the result of inevitable legal challenges by a candidate, but a collective “aha” moment as Maine voters began to pull the propaganda veil away to reveal yet another political con game?
Ranked Choice Voting was passed by peoples’ referendum, a process which has been criticized roundly from all sides of the political spectrum. Because the process does not require signatures to be gathered proportionally by each county, the process becomes a people’s referendum of the most populated areas not the whole of Maine. Why plod along the byways and dusty ways of Piscataquis County, when you can gather all the signatures you need in Portland?
It stands to reason, at it’s inception, from the Referendum process on, Ranked Choice Voting was the will of the voters in the 1st Congressional District. The 2nd Congressional District would not have been fertile ground for signature gathering towards an perceived anti-LePage referendum. It was the 2nd District whose votes swung LePage over the top to victory, and that was reflected when CD2 voted down the referendum by 20,000 votes.
Still, CD1 votes won the day. RCV was immediately challenged in court and ruled unconstitutional. The ruling could only apply to the state constitution; therefore, state elections remained one vote for one person, while Federal elections remained in limbo until they could be challenged at the Federal level.
It was no surprise that the only Congressional District that RCV would effect would be CD2. CD1 would not, and for that matter, will never face an RCV challenge, as it is rumored that Cumberland County is a gated county that requires proof of registration with the Democrat Party before residency. It should be noted that this writer has yet to confirm the veracity of said rumor.
Sarcasm and cynicism aside, at every step in its brief infantile history, Ranked Choice has been the majority wish of one political demographic, CD1. Unfortunately, CD2 is bearing the repercussions of that wish. Ironically, without legal intervention, CD1 now enjoys two Representatives for the will of its voters and CD2 has none.
-Andy Torbett
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