THUMBS UP to a state commission that last year recommended against any efforts to obligate voters to show photo identification at the polls, a position that was vindicated in a study released last week by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
The study compared voter turnout in Kansas and Tennessee, both of which enacted voter ID requirements between 2008 and 2012, with four states that did not make any changes, including Maine.
The GAO found that the more stringent voter ID laws lessened turnout by 2 percent or 3 percent, with greater reductions among minority voters. That aligns with other reports that have shown more restrictive voting laws have a disproportionate impact on poor and minority voters.
The GAO study, which also found little evidence of voter fraud in an analysis of multiple studies on that subject, is not definitive, but it is a sign that Maine’s election laws work well just the way they are.
Maine Republicans in 2011 put forth a bill that would have required voter ID at the polls. Instead, a study commission was formed to look at the issue, and the commission eventually voted 4-1 against recommending changes in the law.
Maine residents, too, overwhelming rejected changes in election law in 2012 when nearly 60 percent of voters voted to repeal a law that killed Election Day registration.
Maine has a long, proud history of high voter turnout. In 2010, more than 55 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot, second only to Minnesota, and in 2012, more than 68 percent of the electorate went to the polls. Amid that high turnout, evidence of voter fraud is infinitesimal.
THUMBS DOWN to news that child poverty in America has hit its highest point in 20 years.
According to a report published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, “1 in 4 children lives in a food-insecure household, 7 million children lack health insurance, a child is abused or neglected every 47 seconds, and 1 in 3 children is overweight or obese.”
The same trend is happening in Maine, where nearly 1 in 4 children younger than 5, and 19.3 percent of all children under the age of 18, were living in poverty as of 2011, according to the Maine Children’s Alliance. Both figures represented an increase from the previous year.
Living in poverty at an early age has an adverse impact on educational attainment and future income, and it can lead to crime and drug abuse. In short, it sets a child behind in a way that makes it difficult to ever get ahead.
THUMBS UP to a partnership between Spectrum Generations and Healthy Communities of the Capital Area that will put more local food in local schools.
A two-year grant from the federal Department of Agriculture will allow the groups to process produce from gardens run by the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office and make them available to schools that don’t typically have the capacity to store or cook fresh produce.
Getting more local food into Maine schools is a worthwhile goal, with benefits for both schools and farms. But it is fraught with technical and logistical problems. Any program that allows schools to try out different strategies is worth a shot.
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