Say no to ranked-choice voting petition  

To the Editor;

The Maine Republican Party is paying an out-of-state signature collection firm $400,000 to gather 63,067 valid signatures by a June 15 deadline.  They even managed to have paid signature collectors designated as “essential workers” during the coronavirus pandemic.

Should this petition effort succeed, the GOP would deny Maine voters the highly anticipated opportunity to rank candidates in the upcoming presidential election and their veto question would appear on the November 2020 ballot. This is in complete contradiction to the will of the people these last four years that required two referendum questions and a strongly successful resistance to ongoing legislative opposition. The will of the people prevailed to assure that Maine voters  may elect our political leaders by majority rule. Yet Republicans would rather have their cronies elected by a minority of voters, again and again, which is not a true democracy. We need ranked choice voting more than ever on Nov. 3 to determine the true choice for U.S. President in Maine.  

To prevent this anti-democratic strategy that would deprive us of majority rule, do not sign the petition being circulated by the Maine Republican Party to repeal ranked choice voting in Maine for U.S President in our general election of Nov. 3 and that would also put a referendum question on our Nov. 3 ballot in an attempt to derail the peoples’ long-held desire for ranked-choice voting in Maine. 

Sidney Mitchell

Dover-Foxcroft