Examples of postcards we wrote out and mailed
John Clark here, taking you under the hood of this year’s Maine election and some of what precedes it so things go well.
For the vast majority of Maine citizens, elections mean enduring endless, and increasingly nastier ads, then going to the polls on election day. However, to get there and make an election happen involves a lot more pieces in play. Beth and I have been more involved ever since Bernie Sanders ran for president. I switched from unenrolled to Democrat and in 2018, jumped into the fray by running for the Maine house.
After we moved to Waterville in 2019, I started working as a member of the Waterville election team, first as a traffic controller in 2020 which involved running around the parking lot at Waterville Junior High School, looking for available parking spots as voters came to cast their ballots.
I’ve worked at every Waterville election since then, some slow like referendum elections, more often fast-paced like the one on Tuesday. For most of them, I’ve served as a ballot clerk, having the other clerk next to me find the voter’s name in the computerized printout, verifying their name and address, then telling me which ballots to retrieve and hand to the voter. I hold them up so the checker can verify I have selected the correct ones, then hand them to the voter, explaining that in this election, the state ballot is two-sided, while the municipal one is single-sided.
If you live in a smaller voting area, like most Maine towns, it’s probable that everyone gets the same ballot(s) in an election. We have seven wards and two legislative districts in Waterville which meant seven local ballots and two state ones to choose, based upon where the voter resides.
Now I’m going to back up to some of the things that happen before the election. Unlike national (president, senate, house) candidates, state senators and representatives do a lot of on the ground work in order to get votes. I’m upfront about what I will and won’t do to help people get elected. I don’t feel comfortable knocking on doors any more, and I suck at phone banking. What I can do comfortably is drive someone around so they can knock on doors. I did it for Rep. Flavia DeBrito in 2024, and this time, I drove Patric Moore, an air force veteran running for the Maine senate, two afternoons a week. Not only did I get to know him well, and bounce some ideas and parts of my own experience running for office off him, I got to see almost house/street in Oakland, Fairfield, and Winslow. Doing something like this to help a good person get elected is easy and, for me, quite comfortable. BTW, he won by more than a thousand votes.
Beth and I also get involved each election by writing and mailing postcards (see examples below), encouraging voters who might not be motivated, to plan a time, and then go vote. This year, due to how critical the election was, we mailed more than 800 postcards. I purchased stamps for the ones encouraging voters in Iowa, Maine, and Texas, while per-Maine clean election law, Patric purchased the ones for those we wrote out and mailed for his campaign.
Anyone who tells you a Maine election can be rigged has never worked in one. Not only do we get very careful training, but nobody can register without some form of identification-passport, drivers license, proof of residency like a bank statement or electric bill showing proof of residence. However, once registered, ID is not required at the polls. All voters are entered into a centralized voter reqistry-CVR which is maintained and updated regularly by Shenna Bellows and her great staff in the Maine Secretary of State’s office. When a voter moves, whether in the same town or to a different one in Maine, or changes their name, those can be done at the polls by having them fill out a change of registration-COR. The changes are made on the computer printout and then entered, after the election in the CVR by Patti Dubois, our super efficient city clerk and her staff.
I worked as an absentee ballot clerk for the first time this year. Voting opened the first week of October and concluded on the Thursday before the election. It was held at the City Hall Annex and ran Mon-Thurs from 8-5. Voters came in, we looked them up in the CVR, gave them ballots, they voted, sealed them in one of the envelopes you see below, and we signed as you see on this sample. We processed about 3,000 absentee ballots and by the time we were done, I’d signed and printed my name more than in most of the rest of my life-see below. Every day, we counted cast ballots and they were locked in a safe at city hall at the close.
Imagine signing and printing your name over 2000 times.
To do an election right, at least in Maine, it takes a lot of people and one hell of a lot of paper-ballots, envelopes, voting lists, etc. When a person came into vote absentee, we first asked if they were registered in Waterville. If yes, we looked them up in the computerized version of the CVR, verified name, address, and date of birth. Once they received a ballot, we had their having voted added to their record in the CVR. This is to make certain people can’t vote twice as everyone who votes prior to election day, has an AV(already voted) in front of their name in the printout we use on election day.
It’s a time-consuming process, but worth it ten times over, and most municipalities are always looking for people to help make elections possible.
Kate Flora: A perfect example of how dazed and dizzy I am is that yesterday, I wrote a whole post, pressed the button to have it post on the website, and it disappeared into the ether. That’s how things feel these days. Between the constant barrage of requests for money from everyone in the country, nerves about the election, and the disjointed effect of the time change, at least once a day I’m convinced that my brain has failed.
New England Crime Bake. That should be fun if I can only organize my thoughts and remember how to do a power point. It also says I’m going to moderate a panel on Sunday. It says there’s a dentist appointment, a hair appointment, two more “maintenance’ appointments and then a quick trip back to Maine to preview the marvelous Gardens Aglow at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden. When, exactly, are those quiet late fall days sitting at my desk writing?
What does that look like? Unlike those of my fellow writers who are plotters or pantsers, I’m a cooker. I don’t write out elaborate notes. Nor do I sit down and start writing and see where the story goes. I start working on the plot and wondering. Wandering around for a few months asking questions. Who was killed? Why were they killed? Who killed them? Who else wanted them dead, and why? What will I put at the crime scene that will help the investigation? And so forth. I often say that, like Paddington Bear, during this process I should wear a little tag that says ‘please look after this author. Thank you.’ And on the back, when I’m found staring blankly at the frozen peas, ‘If found, please return to…’ and my address.
Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), John Clark (Thursday), and Joe Souza (Friday).
The scary part revolves around a ghost-dog wailing in the night. I’m not sure why it scared me so much, because by then, I’m going to guess I was around 10 or 11, I was reading plenty of mysteries and horror without any adverse effects, but even seeing the cover now gives me a chill. I guess it’s the combination of something frightening and unexplained up against the need to do what’s right and vulnerability? The heroine was trying to save an abused horse owned by scary crazy person on a neighboring farm. The ghost must’ve been written in a way that made it terrible and inexplicable. I don’t even remember and I still can’t say. I do remember the feeling it gave me. As kids, we had a habit of reading out loud to each other. I’m not sure how this happened in our otherwise unruly and cranky group, but we did up into the early teen years of us older kids, when it faded away. Anyway, I have a vivid memory of being in an upstairs room on a summer night with the window open and hearing my brother, on the patio below, reading the book to our younger siblings. I’d already read it, and I knew what the resolution was, and I still had to shut the window.
The only thing that compares is a few years later, when I was 14, and inexplicably home alone on a chilly, dark fall day. For hours, I read “In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote. Our dog kept barking for no reason and I several times got up to look out the windows and make sure there were no mass murderers lurking out there. I even locked the doors, which we never did at our house in Augusta, since there were so many of us coming in and out at all hours (including the occasional stranger, a post for another day). It’s one of the few times in my life that I remember being happy when people returned home and I was no longer alone in the house. Boo!
Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson: I don’t remember being scared by any book when I was a child (movies, yes–the cyclops in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad had me looking over my shoulder for weeks after I saw that one.) but I do know what book terrified me most as an adult. That was Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, with his Salem’s Lot as a close runner-up. Much as I admire him as a writer, I’ve never read another of his books except for the On Writing. He’s just too darned good at evoking terror. This was the novel, by the way, that King said scared even him and I believe it. As an aside, years later, an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made use of the same, shall we say unsettling possibility, but in televised form I found it much less upsetting. Go figure.
te Flora, had a hundred acres of fields and woods, and our house was set a quarter-mile from the road, a driveway that was only passable on foot in the winter. We had wood stove heat only. The only running water was cold. And the house was built by my father, who’d never even built a birdhouse before. In the chill of the winter, the wind whipping the zero-degree temperature into minus digits, I was reading this fine book by myself, huddled on the couch, probably because I was too lazy to add a log to the fire, when I came to the part where the large demonic pig, Jodie, is seen outside the house, looking in with large glowing red eyes. I will swear to this day that I looked up at that point, across at the window, and saw those two large glowing eyes staring at me. I’m not sure if I ever finished the book, as I blacked out most of the next two years of my life in sheer terror that Jodie was hunting me.
Kait Carson: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I don’t remember how old I was when I read the book, but it terrified me. I grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, home of the then main campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Iviswold Castle. Built in 1869, the Castle, as we called it, was originally known as Hill House. Despite the subsequent name change, and despite the building’s use as classroom space and administrative offices, the legend stuck. Generations of Rutherford kids dared each other to sneak into the ‘dungeon’ where all manner of horror, and certain death, awaited.
In spring and into early summer, South Florida streets disappear into a riot of color. Red royal poinciana trees, yellow tabebuia, and lavender orchid trees burst into bloom. The scent of orange blossoms perfumes the air. Jasmine runs riot. Bell shaped angel’s trumpets fill backyards, and all varieties of crepe myrtle turn the landscape into a crazy quilt of color.
a speaker at our conference in Wales,” they say. “We want you to a featured guest at our book club.” “I’m organizing a festival and want you to be on a panel.”
urgency to become a standout in the psychological thriller space. Your premise taps into fears that are painfully real, and that’s exactly what makes readers unable to put it down. With the right visibility strategy, this book can reach the audience that’s actively searching for exactly what you’ve written.
Sigh. Sometimes they’re so tempting. For example, how do I know whether this one is genuine? I’d love to talk about A Good Man with a Dog, but alas…One clue is that the Vermont Book Club (book club not bookclub) has its own website and she would have been writing from that.
e-book and trade paper. I was waiting to finalize the trade paperback of #4, Lethal Legend, until I could do another careful proofread of the text. So, I did that, made corrections to the e-book text already sent to D2D, and proceeded to go through the regular process for launching the print-on-demand version. I checked. I double checked. I clicked “approve.” The only thing I didn’t remember to look at was the release date. The print copy setup took everything I’d already chosen for the e-book . . . except for the release date. I totally forgot that unless I change it, that date automatically comes up as either the current date (e-book) or a date a week or so after approval (POD). So, dear readers, although it won’t be out in e-book format until December 8, the trade paperback of Lethal Legand can be ordered from all the usual bookstores NOW. Fortunately, book three, No Mortal Reason, will be available on November 10, so those collecting print editions of all four won’t have long to wait, but boy do I feel foolish!
Maureen Milliken will be at the Thompson Free Library Authors and Artisans Night Market, 4-7 p.m. today (Saturday, Oct. 24), at 186 East Main St., Dover-Foxcroft. The event includes local authors, vendors of crafts, baked goods, pottery, soap, fiber art, visual art and more. There is also hot food and hot drinks. Authors will be inside the library selling and signing books, vendors are outdoors and in the basement is the library’s 10 cent book sale. Come on up to beautiful Dover-Foxcroft, enjoy the last great days of fall in Maine, find some cool stuff and books, and help support a fantastic library.
