Stateside: Maine

Maine was admitted to the Union on March 15, 1820, as part of the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state in order to keep the number of senators from both camps equal. A poem written by a Mainer, Timothy Claimright, decries the state’s association with anything whatsoever to do with slavery. In part it reads, referring to slaveholders:

They, too lazy to work, drive slaves, whom they fear;
We school our own children, and brew our own beer.
We do a day’s work and go fearless to bed;
Tho’ lock’d up, they dream of slaves, whom they dread.
We have learn’d too much wisdom to emigrate west,
As poor souls returning, too well can attest.
We this principle hold, as fixed, as fate,
Independent of them, we will be a State.

I found the poem on a Library of Congress website for school children, in a section about President James Monroe. His two terms as president (1817–1825) span an important era for the new nation, yet you won’t find him on any coins or banknotes, other than commemorative coins such as the 1923 Monroe Doctrine Centennial commemorative, a 2008 dollar coin, and the 1999 New Jersey quarter. On that he is just a tiny figure with a flag, standing behind George Washington, as depicted in a famous painting by Emanuel Leutze.

But I digress.

Despite Maine’s becoming a state in 1820—over the objections of Massachusetts which wanted to add Maine’s land to its own—its northern border with Canada wasn’t settled until 1842. An invasion of one seaport in Maine by the British during the 1812 War between the US and Britain is being celebrated this weekend with a Pirate Festival.

The press release for the invasion of Lubec said of last year’s invasion: “…without a cloud in the sky, and without the cover of fog, over 150 Eastport Pirates, joined by wenches and scallywags from as far away as Russia, sailed in to Lubec Harbor and took the coastal town by storm. The band of Pirates enjoyed the military escort and support of the US Coast Guard Eastport in landing on Lubec's shores.” You can see pictures of this year’s invasion and festival here.

It seems no prisoners were taken by the pirates, but Maine’s real-life prisoners, or absence of them, are an example of one of the oddities of elections in the U.S.—the inclusion of prisoners in statistics that are used to set the boundaries of voting districts. Maine is one of only two states that don’t disenfranchise prisoners, but nonetheless, in a school district that weights votes based on the U.S. Census, the inclusion of “phantom prisoners” has the effect of giving voters in one town more electoral power than voters in the other towns in the district.

According to a press release from Prisoners of the Census:

“The residents of Maine's Regional School Unit 13 have launched a petition drive to end prison-based gerrymandering in their school district. The school district’s voting system is based on Census Bureau estimates for 2006 that credited the town of Thomaston with the population of the Maine State Prison that had closed 4 years prior. Not only does Maine state law say that a prison is not a residence, the prison counted in the Census did not even exist at the time of the count. Unfortunately, the school board has refused to change the voting system, and to date the Commissioner of Education has ignored requests to intervene. By Maine law, voters can use a petition to require the Commissioner to rule on whether a voting system violates the constitutional principles of One Person One Vote.”

Although the petition is open only to residents of Cushing, Owls Head, Rockland, South Thomaston, St. George, and Thomaston, Maine, you can read an FAQ about the issues involved here.

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

© Scoop Media