Voters turned out in a steady stream Tuesday across the Augusta area, casting votes for routine local municipal and school board elections, but the largest draw for many were the statewide referendum questions.

Specifically, Question 1, on the New England Clean Energy Connect corridor. For months, airwaves and mailboxes and newspapers have been full of arguments for and against the project that’s slated to connect Massachusetts with hydropower from Quebec via an energy corridor through Maine.

For many voters, it was all too much.

In Winthrop, Kristine Longstaff has always considered voting her obligation, and she exercised her duty Tuesday at the Winthrop High School gym.

“It’s difficult for people to know how to vote because of the way things are written,” Longstaff said. “You have to do your homework and talk to the people who know what’s going on or have some information. I try to see both sides of an issue, but you have to decide which side mostly closely meshes with your ideas.”

Given all the information that’s been pushed out in the months leading up to Tuesday’s vote, she said she doesn’t know how people can decide.

“I just wish all the money that was spent in all the advertising and harassment of voters was spent on something else the state needs to be done,”  she said.

For Buck Pushard, who votes routinely, Question 1 was his biggest impetus to vote on Tuesday.

Buck Pushard

“I have probably flip-flopped on this a half-dozen times trying to figure out who’s telling the most facts and the less lies,” Pushard said. “It seems like both campaigns were heavy on the lies and light on the truth.”

He said he wasn’t influenced by the advertising on the issues, but he read up on it and conferred with his wife.

When he went to vote early Tuesday afternoon, there was a short line, but it moved steadily.

Inside the gymnasium, Town Clerk Nikki Shaw and Diane Ouellette, a longtime election warden, said the flow of voters had been steady to that point with in-person voting. About 1,000 absentee ballots had been requested, which is a lot for an off-year election, Ouellette said.

In Augusta, where voting was taking place at four locations, voters had the opportunity to choose the city’s next mayor, two seats on the City Council, two seats on the Augusta School Board and, for some, a chance to fill an open seat in the state House of Representatives.

Even with the local races, Question 1 dominated the attention of Augusta voters.

Eliza Quill

Eliza Quill said she planned to vote against the energy corridor by voting yes on Question 1, because she doesn’t want a Canadian company making money off running its line through Maine. While she doesn’t have television and internet, she reads newspapers and she has made up her mind.

“We don’t need that,” she said. “We need solar.”

Quill said she has complete faith in the election system.

“There’s nothing shifty going on,” she said.

Another woman, who declined to give her name, said she has no faith in Maine’s voting system.

“I think they need to go back to the paper ballots, and get rid of all the Dominion voting. I don’t (know) what machines they use here, but there is some corruption going on and it’s been like that for generations,” the female voter said.

Maine does, in fact, use paper ballots ands does not use Dominion. And while Dominion Voting Systems has been the focus of voter fraud complaints in other states, those claims have not been proven in court.

Jason Ridley said he votes regardless of the election, and Question 1 was a big draw.

“It’s annoyed me because we’re not getting all the information we should be getting,” Ridley said.

The information that’s been shared has not been helpful because, he said, it’s missing some facts.

“If it was all the true information out there, I think it would be good, he said.”

Jason Ridley

In Gardiner, where the line to vote was starting to grow as people stopped by after work, City Clerk Alisha Ballard said turnout had been steady all day, with 812 votes cast by shortly after 5 p.m.

Like other Gardiner voters, Jeff Corey had decisions to make about City Council and Gardiner-area school board seats, as well as the three statewide referendum questions.

Question 1 was his big draw as well, and he voted no to support the continuation of the project. He was influenced in part by the endorsements of the state’s newspapers, he said.

Corey said he likes to complain, but he can’t do that “if I don’t do my civic duty.”

Other statewide referendum questions included Question 2, which sought a $100 million bond to build or improve roads, bridges, railroads, airports, transit facilities and ports, with the money used to leverage about $253 million in federal and other money.

Question 3 asked voters to approve a constitutional amendment declaring the right of Mainers to grow, raise, harvest, produce and consume the food of their own choosing.

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