This week the ACLU of Maine stood with our seventeen coalition partners from across the state to launch the "Yes on 1" campaign to restore same day voter registration.  We talked about our more than 1,000 volunteers from every county in the state who will work with us to Get Out the Vote for Yes on 1.  When the press conference had concluded, our opponents (who crashed the grassroots press conference) took  the microphone.  Then came the buzzwords from our opponents weaving a trite but complicated fiction.

Fiction:  A minority of only "left-wing" Maine voters support same day voter registration.

Fact: The Protect Maine Votes assembled more than 70,000 signatures from registered Maine voters including Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in just over 3 weeks in a grassroots campaign with no paid signature gathering firm or outside collectors.

Fact:  Non-partisan groups including the AARP, Disability Rights Center, and the League of Women Voters have endorsed this campaign.  The combined membership of the groups that have endorsed this campaign exceeds 400,000 Mainers.

We are no minority.

Fiction:  College students who register to vote on Election Day are committing "fraud.

Fact:  The United States Supreme Court and the Maine Supreme Court have both ruled that college students may vote in the town where they attend school.  We want everyone, including students, to be involved in our democracy by exercising their fundamental constitutional right to vote.

Fiction:  The clerks have requested that we eliminate same day voter registration.

Fact:  The Maine Town and City Clerks Association testified in favor of preserving same day voter registration at public hearings before the legislature.

Fiction:  We must eliminate same day voter registration to improve the security of our voting system.

Fact:  Maine's voting system is highly secure and has experienced no fraud problems in the nearly forty years that same day voter registration has been in place.  Just two individuals have been prosecuted and convicted for voting twice on Election Day.  Eliminating same day voter registration will lead to Florida-style security problems where legitimate voters' names can be scrubbed from the voter rolls, and the voters have no recourse on Election Day.

As we launch a grassroots field campaign, my hope is that Mainers will reject soundbites and buzzwords and choose fact over fiction on Election Day by voting Yes on 1 to keep same day voter registration.