Action Under the Dome

Monday, January 13, 2025
Jen Lancaster
 

It's Monday, January 13.

The 132nd Legislature has officially begun, and the deadline for submitting bills for consideration has now passed. So what comes next?

 
 

Each submitted bill has a primary sponsor, a legislator who supports the bill and advocates for it. Bills often have co-sponsors, additional legislators who back the legislation. Bills are first submitted to the revisor's office, who work to ensure the bill language follows legal verbiage requirements, and that the bill will accomplish what it sets out to do. It's a big job!

Next, bills are sent to the clerks of the Maine House and Senate. They review the bills and send them to one of the legislative committtees. Committees review the bills, receive public comments, workshop the drafts, and approve (or oppose) the bills, and finally, send them back to the House or Senate.

As the legislative session kicks off, we encourage you to bookmark a few helpful pages:

  • When you want to look up a bill, you can use this search feature.
  • The League also provides bill tracking on our website for bills concerning our priority areas. 
  • Here is the legislative calendar. It provides public information on all legislative meetings. You'll notice that House and Senate sessions are only scheduled on Tuesdays for now.
  • The bills that the League works on appear before the State and Local Government (SLG) and Veterans and Legal Affairs (VLA) Committees. Check them out here: SLG and VLA.
 
 

Voter ID referendum is unnecessary, expensive, and harmful to Maine voters

Check out our latest op-ed on the upcoming voter suppression referendum. It adds restrictive voter ID requirements, but it also attacks absentee voting. These restrictions can and will harm every type of voter, with senior and rural voters experiencing the worst of the disenfranchisement. Read more here

 

Shouldn't election results be fair and proportional?

The League of Women Voters of Maine has endorsed ranked choice voting since 2011. But after a controversial election in 2021, which led to demonstrably nonproportional results in a Portland race, the League wanted to take a closer look at municipal elections and started an official League study. In theory, in a multi-seat race, the elected candidates should represent the voting population, right? After several years of research and writing, the pRCV Study Committee is launching its study guide

Learn more about the pRCV study, the study process, and upcoming study events at: www.lwvme.org/pRCV