Important Information Relating to Municipal Caucuses and Election Clerks
Prepared by the Division of Elections – January, 2018
Caucus Requirements
§ Each qualified political party (Democratic, Green Independent, Libertarian and Republican) must hold a biennial municipal caucus in at least one municipality in a minimum of 14 counties for the purpose of electing delegates to a state convention and for any other business. (Title 21-A, §301)
§ All caucuses must be held by March 20, 2018. The parties should be notifying you of the caucus date(s) for their party. We will update you as information becomes available to us.
§ At the request of the committee calling the caucus, the municipal officers shall provide available space in a public building for the caucus. If the party requests a specific space or room that is not available for the date or time requested, the municipality may provide a suitable alternate location. A municipality may charge a rental fee or janitorial service fee for the available space.
NOTE: The ability for the municipality to charge the party a fee is a law change, effective 11/1/2017 pursuant to the Public Laws of 2017, Chapter 248. Prior to this change, municipalities were not permitted to charge a party any fee.
§ The secretary of the municipal party committee must file a copy of the notice of the caucus with the Municipal Clerk, who shall record it.
Registrar’s Requirements
Review Title 21-A and Chapter 1, pages 9-12, of your Voter Registration & Elections training manual for qualification, selection and duties of Registrars and Deputy Registrars.
A. Providing the Free Biennial Caucus Voter File (Caucus List)
§ The chair or secretary of the municipal committee or the person or persons calling a biennial municipal caucus may request a certified copy of the voter list (Title 21-A, §312), designated as the Biennial Caucus Voter File in CVR. This is a one-time voter file used exclusively to conduct the caucus.
§ The Biennial Caucus Voter File must include all voters – not just voters enrolled in the party requesting the voter file. The voter file is used for check-in purposes; there may be unenrolled voters, or voters who have moved from other municipalities and want to change enrollment, who want to participate in the caucus.
§ Title 21-A, section 312 specifies that the voter file provided for use with a caucus may include only the following information for each voter: name, residence address, mailing address, enrollment status, electoral district, voter status as active or inactive, voter record number and any special designation indicating the voter is a uniformed service voter, overseas voter or township voter. By law, the voter file provided for use with a caucus may not include the date of birth. The Biennial Caucus Voter File is designed to include only data that is authorized by law. Do not provide any other voter file or report for use with a caucus.
§ The Biennial Caucus Voter File is available in electronic (text file) format only. Municipal Clerks and Registrars have no authority under the law to import data from the text file into a spreadsheet for the recipient. It is the responsibility of recipients to convert the text file to a spreadsheet, or to obtain independent assistance with it.
§ One free Biennial Caucus Voter File must be provided for use by the municipal committee each biennial election cycle (beginning January 1st of a general election year) upon request. The requester must complete and sign the “Request for Obtaining Data from Maine CVR” form. Recipients of Biennial Caucus Voter Files are not eligible to receive updates to it. If they want an updated voter file after the caucus, they must purchase a Party/Campaign Use Voter File.
§ The Registrar has 5 business days to prepare and provide the Biennial Caucus Voter File to the requester; however, please ensure it is available before the caucus.
§ A county committee may call the caucus if the municipal committee fails to do so (or there is no municipal committee). If the Municipal Clerk provides a Biennial Caucus Voter File to the county committee, this fulfills the requirement in Title 21-A, section 312 – should a municipal committee member request a voting list at a later date, the municipal committee would not be eligible for a free list.
B. Generating the Biennial Municipal Caucus File
1. The Biennial Municipal Caucus File is located under Reports " Public Reports " Voter.
To generate the voter file, select the Wards/Precincts, and click on the “Make Disk/Submit Request” button:
The term “Make Disk” in this instance is another way of saying “create a text file”, not a reference to actually saving the report to a disk (CD) at this point. You will be directed to go to Report Status for the voter file.
2. This is a text file, not a printed report – the raw voter data generated by the file is known as pipe-delimited text, because each piece of data is separated by a pipe character ( | ).
If you open the file, this is what you will see:
3. After the Biennial Caucus Voter File is created, transfer it to a CD (or a thumb drive if the recipient provides one for you to use) and provide it to the person requesting it, with a set of instructions for importing the data into Excel (available on the Elections Temp Page): http://www.maine.gov/sos/cec/elec/temp/
4. Procedures for transferring the voter file to CD are specific to the computer operating system you are using. Instructions for doing this with an XP computer are available in the CVR Guide, Chapter 9, pages 11-17. If this process does not work for you and you are not familiar with how to transfer data to CD, you will need to ask your IT staff for assistance. If you do not have IT support for your municipal office, please contact the CVR Help Desk.
5. Do not provide any other voter file or report for use with caucuses. Do not convert text files to Excel spreadsheets for recipients – you are not authorized under the law to do this.
C. Attending Party Caucus
§ Because this is a gubernatorial election year, the Registrar must attend the official party caucus for at least one-half hour before the start of the caucus, at the location where the caucus is being held, to accept registrations and enrollments. If the party does not send a direct notification to the Registrar and you are aware that the caucus is being held, you are still required by statute to attend for the one-half hour before the start of the caucus, whether the party calls to make arrangements or not.
NOTE: The Registrar is required to remain at the caucus to allow all persons to register and enroll who are present at the caucus at the end of the one-half hour period. This does not mean the Registrar must remain for the duration of the caucus, rather if there is still a line at the end of one-half hour, the Registrar shall remain until those voters have been assisted. The Registrar’s role is not to check people in for the caucus. If the party wants voters to be checked in, they are responsible for having someone check voters in using the Biennial Caucus Voter File that has been imported into Excel.
§ A caucus may be held outside the municipality if several municipalities elect to meet on a consolidated basis. If a political party chooses to hold a regional caucus (2 or more municipalities from a certain area caucusing together in a central location), the Registrar for each municipality participating in the caucus must attend the regional caucus, even if the caucus is held outside of the Registrar’s municipality.
§ The Registrar may appoint a Deputy Registrar to attend a caucus and accept new registrations and enrollments. A Deputy Registrar performs any of the duties prescribed by the appointing authority; voter registrations and enrollments accepted by the Deputy Registrar at the caucus must be entered in CVR, and new voters are added to the voting list.
§ Bring to the caucus blank voter registration applications for use by voters who need to register or enroll, and an Alpha Voter List (which includes 17 year olds) from CVR. The Alpha Voter List is for use by the Registrar only (to make notes, if necessary) – do not give a copy of the Alpha Voter List to the party. A requestor of the Biennial Caucus Voter File will receive only the electronic text file.
NOTE: To include 17 year olds on the Alpha Voter List, you must enter an age range. We suggest you enter an age range of “17 to 218”, which will include any voter with a default date of birth (1/1/1800).
§ When processing enrollments at the caucus, the Registrar must be aware of the requirements for changing enrollment outlined in Title 21-A, §145:
4 An unenrolled voter may enroll in a party at any time (including at the caucus) and is eligible to participate in the caucus or other party activities immediately.
4 A voter who has just moved to your municipality is allowed to change enrollment and participate in the caucus (no waiting period; they get a “clean slate”).
4 An existing voter in your municipality may not vote at a caucus for 15 days after filing an application to change enrollment. Existing voters in your municipality who do not change enrollment at least 15 days before the caucus will not be eligible to participate in the caucus.
4 CVR is designed to track the waiting period on party enrollment changes. When a voter changes from one party to another and the 15-day waiting period applies, the voter will be identified in the Biennial Caucus Voter File and on the Alpha Voter List with an “X”, during the 15 day period when the voter is ineligible to participate in party caucuses or other party activities.
NOTE: If you discover that a voter has been placed in “X” status erroneously, or that a voter’s enrollment was entered incorrectly in CVR, contact the Division of Elections immediately so that the voter’s record can be corrected. You cannot correct this yourself – it has to be done by script.
§ A voter must be at least 18 years of age to participate in the caucus, except that 17 year olds who will be 18 years old by the General Election (November 6, 2018) may participate.
The 17 year old must be registered to vote and enrolled in the party holding the caucus. (These 17 year old voters are also eligible to participate in the June 12, 2018 Primary Election.)
In order for these voters to appear on the Caucus List and Alpha Voter List, these 17 year olds must be entered into CVR with a status of “Pending Age” – see Chapter 4, page 8 of the CVR Guide.
Important note about “Pending Age” status: When voters are entered in CVR with “Pending Age” status, do NOT subsequently change the voter’s status. CVR is designed to automatically change the voter’s status to Active on the voter’s 18th birthday, and the 18th birthday will become the voter’s official registration date. (Example, if Willow Dillo registers to vote on January 20th at age 17, and her birthday is May 1st, CVR will automatically change her status to Active on May 1st, and her official registration date will be 5/1/18). If you change the status manually, it interferes with this process, and CVR will continue to treat the voter as “Pending Age”, which creates other problems.
Appointment of Election Clerks
§ Municipal officers must appoint Election Clerks by May 1, 2018. (Title 21-A, §503)
§ All nominations for election clerks must be submitted to the municipal officers no later than April 1, 2018.
§ Parties often nominate Election Clerks at the party’s biennial municipal caucus. You may wish to remind the chairs of the municipal party committees of the April 1, 2018 deadline for submitting Election Clerk nominations to the municipal officers.
§ The municipal officers shall consider persons nominated by the party, but are not required to appoint these persons.
§ Review Title 21-A and Chapter 1, pages 7, 8 & 8-A, of your training manual: Voter Registration & Elections: The Guide for Maine Election Administrators, for qualifications, nomination, appointment, selection and duties of Election Clerks.
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