Absentee voting in Maine is getting underway, with the state’s four Electoral College votes up for grabs and a number of other national, statewide and local races on the ballot.

Maine is one of two states in the U.S. — the other is Nebraska — that does not use a winner-take-all system for all its electors. In the presidential race, two electors are given to the winner of the statewide popular vote, while one elector is awarded to Maine’s District 1 and District 2, respectively.

Maine is mostly Democratic, but its vast 2nd District is critical for a Trump victory

Maine is one of several Democratic-leaning northeastern states. President Biden won here by about nine points in 2020, improving on Hillary Clinton’s margin four years earlier. And it hasn’t voted for a Republican at the statewide level since 1988. It is ranked Likely D on the Fox News Power Rankings.

Like Nebraska, it also allocates its electoral votes by congressional district. The winner of the statewide tally receives two votes, with another vote for the winner of the presidential tally in each of its two districts.

The small coastal 1st District is solid blue territory. The 2nd District, which is predominantly rural and represents almost all the land area of the state, leans conservative.

Trump won the 2nd District by 7.4 points in his last race, and it’s ranked Likely R this cycle. The former president will look for a win here to get one step closer to the 270 electoral votes he needs to win the presidency.

Key downballot races in today’s early voting states

The same district is also home to a competitive House race.

Maine’s 2nd District: Incumbent Rep. Jared Golden is one of five Democrats running in districts Trump won in the last presidential election (Golden won by 6 points). The former Marine made headlines this year when he said he “didn’t know” whether he would vote for Biden again and was one of the first Democrats to question Biden’s mental fitness. This time, he’s up against Maine State Representative and former NASCAR driver Austin Theriault, who says he wants “more balance and less extremism” in politics. This race is a Power Rankings toss-up.

How to vote in Maine

This is a guide to registration and early voting. For comprehensive and up-to-date information on voter eligibility, processes and deadlines, please go to Vote.gov and the election website for Maine.

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Voting by mail

Absentee ballots are beginning to be sent to voters after clerks were required to have received printed ballots to be sent out by Saturday. Applicants do not need to provide an excuse to receive a ballot. The state must receive a ballot application by Oct. 31, and that ballot must be delivered to county officials by Nov. 5.

A voter arrives at a polling location to vote in Portland, Maine, Nov. 3, 2009. (Reuters/Joel Page)

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Early in-person voting

Maine counties offer early in-person voting, but the start date varies by location. Check the state’s website for more information. Residents may vote in person with an absentee ballot until the Thursday before Election Day.

A box for ballots in a polling area ahead of Election Day at Waterville Junior High School in Waterville, Maine, Nov. 2, 2020.   (Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)

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Voter registration

Maine residents can register to vote online or by mail through Oct. 15. They can also register in person during early voting and on Election Day.

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.” – E.B. White, “Charlotte’s Web”

Even though he wasn’t born here, E.B. White lived for nearly 50 years on a farm in Brooklin, Maine, and did almost all of his best work here. That said, I thought I’d take a brief look at the life of one of Maine’s favorite writers.

Elwyn Brooks White was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in 1899. After graduating from Cornell University in 1921, he roamed across America taking jobs as a reporter and freelance writer.

In 1927 White landed a job at The New Yorker, the magazine with which he’d spend his entire career, working first as a writer and contributing editor, and later as a monthly columnist right up to his death. In the witty pieces he produced, he mused about everything from life in the city to literature and politics.

After more than a decade in New York he came to the realization that “I was stuck with the editorial ‘we,’ a weasel word suggestive of corporate profundity or institutional consensus. I wanted to write as straight as possible, with no fuzziness.” (Later in the book “The Elements of Style,” he opined, “Even to a writer who is being intentionally obscure or wild of tongue we can say ‘Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand!’”)

So, in 1938, he moved to a saltwater farm in Brooklin, where he lived until his passing in 1985. As he was about to leave the big city, Harper’s magazine offered him the princely sum of $300 a month (over $6,000 in today’s dollars) if he’d send them monthly essays about rural life.

Fifty-five of those essays would be collected in White’s 1942 book “One Man’s Meat.” Forty years later he’d write in his introduction to the book’s revised edition, “Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep. I think of those five years (1938–1942) in Maine as the time when this happened to me. . . . I was suddenly seeing, feeling, and listening as a child sees, feels, and listens. It was one of those rare interludes that can never be repeated, a time of enchantment.”

Still, White said he found writing difficult and bad for one’s disposition, saying, “Writing is hard work and bad for the health.” But he kept at it. He began writing “Stuart Little” as a story for a 6-year-old niece of his, but before he’d finished it in 1945 she had grown up. “I am still encouraged to go on,” he said. “I wouldn’t know where else to go.”

“If the world were merely seductive,” he concluded, “that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

“Stuart Little” was followed in 1952 by “Charlotte’s Web,” the poignant children’s classic about the friendship between Charlotte the spider and Wilbur the pig. After those books came “The Trumpet of the Swan” in 1970, the same year he received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web.”

In his New Yorker column of July 27, 1957, White praised a 43-page handbook on good writing written by his former professor, William Strunk Jr., as “a summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English.” Two years later Macmillan and Co. published White’s revision of Strunk’s 1935 edition of “The Elements of Style.” White’s expanded version (my 1979 third edition comes in at 85 pages not counting the index) went on to sell more than 2 million copies.

“Vigorous writing is concise,” he wrote in his revisions. “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

And if you’re a writer, remember that “Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”

I’ll leave you with two of what I think are the best pieces of E.B. White’s advice: “The best writing is rewriting,” and “Use the smallest word that does the job.”

Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.

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A makers market featuring Maine artisans who specialize in upcycled goods, slow fashion and/or found art will take place on Saturday, Oct. 19, from 3 to 6 p.m. at the American Legion in Damariscotta. 

Drawing inspiration from the newly formed Congressional Slow Fashion Caucus, co-founded by Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), the market aims to raise awareness about fast fashion’s impact on the climate crisis. The caucus promotes reducing, repairing, rewearing, and recycling as sustainable alternatives and supports the return of USA-based textile and apparel production.

The market will be co-located with the “Rally for Democracy” sponsored by the Lincoln County Democratic Committee. The rally is a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) party with live music, food and drinks for purchase, activities for all ages, and opportunities to meet Democratic candidates and gather voter information. Pingree will attend the rally and make remarks.

Four makers will be selling jewelry, art, children’s clothing, one-of-a-kind fashions and accessories at the mini market.

Based on Deer Isle, Maureen Farr’s Mozelle Fine Jewelry has evolved from found object jewelry to creating pieces of silver, colorful enamels on copper and repurposed steel. Attendees may pre-order at https://www.mozellefinejewelry.com/shop-mozelle for pickup at the event by selecting that option at checkout.

From her studio in Bath, Kharris B creates assemblage art. “Old photos, recipe cards and letters, discarded old books, camera lenses beyond repair, retired clocks and tools… there are treasures everywhere if you are looking for them…” explains her website, https://www.kharrisb.com/. Contact her to request that specific pieces be brought to the market for in-person viewing. 

Kate and Nick Bergmann of Peace House Studio in Bath create children’s clothing made in the USA from durable, soft organic cotton. When items are worn or outgrown, they can be returned to the Patches Project for store credit. The Bergmanns state,“We believe that clothes belong on people, not in landfills.” Learn more at https://www.peacehousestudio.com/.

Callie Rhodin creates one-of-a-kind upcycled, hand painted and well-loved fashion, accessories and art under her selkie silhouettes brand based in Portland. Rhodin’s “art comes from a part of you that is entirely magic” as described on her website, https://selkiesilhouettes.shop.

For more information, visit https://lincolncountydemocrats.com/rally.