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More Election Day inconsistencies at polls surface

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Two Lebanon residents who are registered as unenrolled voters say they were never offered the choice of voting in the Republican or Democratic primary on Election Day as local vote officials said they were to have been advised.

The two residents, who do not want to go public, but whose identity and voter registration status has been confirmed, say when they gave their name, they were simply given the town referendum ballot and the state ballot on Sunday alcohol sales, and never verbally asked by the pollworker if they wanted to vote in either primary contest.

Lebanon election officials said on Thursday that if a pollworker did that, they were in error. They said pollworkers were specifically told that if the voter was unenrolled they were to be asked in words to the effect: “Do you want to vote in a primary?”

The voter would then be able to choose which primary they wanted to vote on, would fill out documentation to enroll in the chosen party and given their requested ballot.

The two residents both individually said that was not the case.

Meanwhile, in Acton, voters who are unenrolled are simply given their ballots and sent to the polling booth. “We do not ask them if they want to vote in a primary,” Acton Town Clerk Jennifer Roux said today. “We say, ‘You are unenrolled, here’s your town ballot.’”

Other Election Day polling place inconsistencies surfaced during voting last week when extended “smalltalk” between voters and candidates outside the polling place was allowed in Lebanon but not in Acton.

Voting procedure as outlined in Maine State Election Law under 21A - 671 seems to fall with Acton’s interpretation, however Deputy Secretary of State Julie Flynn said Lebanon’s practice of asking voters if they wanted to participate in primary voting is absolutely OK if the flow of voters allows it. She said the big thing is you don’t want to be guiding voters to enroll in a particular party.

Meanwhile, Shapleigh Town Clerk Joanne Rankin said today that they allow “smaltalk.”

She said that she wasn’t sure if unenrolled voters were asked if they wanted to vote in a primary, but if they wanted to choose a primary ballot, they were free to do that if they changed their voter registration card.

“We’ve never had a problem,” she said today.

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