Uncle found this story from the State of my Birth
A Bangor police officer says he wasn’t allowed to cast his ballot when an election warden refused to let him vote while wearing his service revolver. James Dearing said he was patrolling his beat Friday when he stopped to vote at the Bangor Civic Center. He said that’s where warden Wayne Mallar said he couldn’t vote unless he turned over his weapon.
Dearing refused, and then wrote a letter to Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap. Dunlap told the Bangor Daily News yesterday there is no state law prohibiting officers from carrying firearms while voting.
What is with all the dumbshit gun stories from Maine? You can carry a gun while voting as a private citizen, and if you carry openly you can do it without any permits or permissions.
To deny and open carrying, and uniformed peace officer is pure stupidity. For this to happen in Bangor, which is NOT Southern Maine (read Boston Lite) it is beyond the pale.
Seriously, folks, elect Paul Lepage and put a stop to this stupid crap!
That is TRULY a YGTBSM moment… sigh… But if they get in, it will become the norm!
Yeah the secretary of state has said that there are no laws to prevent the officer from carrying wile voting. The poll warden was later quoted as saying he didn’t care about the law, he was in charge. I need not say the political affiliation of the warden, right?
I was planning on bringing a pitchfork to the polls tomorrow, but maybe I should OC. It’s a short enough walk, I could take the 5-7. Not sure how we’d fit in a booth tho.
They’ve dismissed the election warden over it and they are looking to apologize to the officer.
http://www.bangordailynews.com/story/Greater-Bangor/Bangor-election-warden-dismissed-over-cop-gun-flap,157664
Sometimes, I guess, these things work out.
No! This is exactly what should happen!
No guns for us means no guns for them!
The police are just citizens just like the rest of us and making special exceptions for them creates and widens an artificial rift that makes us second class citizens behind and under them.
The police are merely the portion of the population whose job it is to fight crime.
Well I see what you’re talking about, but I can’t agree.
#1. This is not a Victim Disbarment polling place. EVERYBODY can carry at a poll in Maine (at least per state law)
#2. A PD uniform is as good an ID as anything showing this individual is not a prohibited person.
#3. He was doing an action as a private citizen when he took a break to vote.
so yeah this COULD be a cool story of a gun-free-zone poll where the warder declared that gun-free means gun-free and the Badge gives you no immunity. (Guess who will get fired within the hour?)
Oh yeah?
Sorry, that’s all I got.
I am so accustomed to no guns at the polls it genuinely never occurred to me that Maine might allow them.
My bad.
No worries. State-to-state gun laws are so illogical and fucked up. We have a LOT of work to do!
You can carry to the polls in New Hampshire, also. The little “NH Votes” sticker they gave me was promptly stuck to my holster.
McThag,
I’m with you — can’t carry in Texas to a Polling Place — Unless you are “authorized”.
Gah, I still can’t get behind Lepage, though I’d rather take him than Liberal Mitchell. Once again I find myself voting AGAINST one guy instead of voting FOR a candidate.
Curious, what don’t you like about LePage?
Mostly the fact that he comes off as batshit crazy. He’s just a seriously shady mofo, he’s been caught in a few very bold lies. Plus he’s the general manager of Mardens, I fucking hate that place.
Heh, I happen to LOVE Mardens, but I get that you have to sift through 100lbs of literal trash to find something that’s really cool…and you don’t have to pay much for your troubles doesn’t appeal to everybody.
My whole family is avid Mardens shoppers.
The only one I’ve ever really been to is the one in Lewiston, and that one is kinda sketchy. I have bought a few things there, but for some reason the Mardens in Lewiston just gives me the creeps in a Stephen King sort of way.
No, Matthew, that’s all of them. They’re low-rent, high-volume surplus and salvage, so they tend to be in gutted out buildings (the one in Portland is in an old Child-World that they aquired when that chain went tits-up) They all kinda look the same, low-rent “Box-Store” from the K-Mart era, except that maybe 70% of the stock all looks like it would be better served in a dumpster rather than a store shelf.
But damn the remaining 30% may be nothing spectacular, but if its something you like or want you can get a pile of it for short money!