Poster Contest Winners
Mina Kazimierczak
3rd Grade - The Boxberry School, Norway
Nathan Cooper
5th Grade - The Boxberry School, Norway
Constitution Essay Winner
Carolyn Frank
8th Grade - Home School, Farmington
"The Division of Power"
On March 15, 1820, Maine officially became the 23rd state of the United States of America. Instead of remaining subject to the rule of Massachusetts’s government, it separated and created its own laws, government and, most importantly, its own constitution. As in all states, the Maine government is dictated by a constitution. One important function of the Maine Constitution is to divide control evenly in the government. By giving equal but different powers to three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial - the constitution ensures that no single authority can usurp and control the state of Maine.
The executive branch of the Maine government consists of the governor and his or her cabinet officials. The governor, being “the supreme executive power of this State,” (Article V, Part First, Section 1 of the Maine Constitution) is the commander in chief of the navy, army and militia. Some duties of the governor are evaluating and either passing or vetoing laws. The governor can adjourn or convene the senate, therefore having some control over the legislative branch. The Maine Constitution also gives the executive branch power over the judicial branch by giving it the power to appoint judges on the Supreme Court and to pardon the convicted, regardless of the court’s view.
The legislative branch consists of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are made up of representatives and senators from each district in Maine. The main purpose of the Legislature is to compose and vote on laws to solve issues of the state. After laws are approved by both houses, they are sent to the governor. Even if the governor vetoes a law, the Legislature can still pass it by voting on it again. If both houses approve of it a second time, the law is passed. In this way the Legislature has the power to pass laws that may affect the executive and judicial branches even if these branches do not consent.
The judicial branch is the Supreme Court of the state of Maine. This court has nine judges and a jury. It is the Supreme Court’s duty to resolve arguments brought to them by the other two branches. The judges base all resolutions on the interpretation of the constitution’s laws. They can decide the outcome of disagreements that may affect the governor and the Legislature. In this way, the Maine constitution gives the judicial branch control over the two other branches of the government.
The Maine Constitution was written to ensure that the state of Maine would maintain a fair and just system of government. It does this is by splitting power evenly between several offices. If each branch of the government is ruled by separate people, no one group of people can control the government. The constitution also gives each branch small amounts of power over the other two branches, further ensuring that the government of the state of Maine is ruled impartialy. By giving the Maine government a system of checks and balances, the Maine Constitution prevents against a single ruling party seizing control of Maine.
The Importance of Voting and Democracy Essay
Dominick Frank
10th Grade - Home School, Farmington
"The Rise of Democracy"
In 1797, a group of early American aristocrats, mostly middle-aged white men, arrived in Philadelphia. They were all participants in the recently resolved American Revolution. Each one of them was particularly well off and several of them could even be considered wealthy. They were meeting to begin work on a very influential project. The results of their meeting were a system of government that they called a democracy and a very important document known as the Constitution of the United States. In the U.S. Constitution one can find the basic rights entailed to every citizen, including the most important, the right to vote.
During the 18th century the term democracy was not all together a new idea, but the structure created by the constitutional delegates was. No one in the history of the world had ever created a government run completely by the people, with a system they called checks and balances, which ensured that no one branch got too powerful. They took a structure of government created by the Dutch, and used it as a starting point. The United Provinces of the Netherlands was formed a century earlier, and it was based on the idea of a free society, which ultimately failed due to the lack of a centralized government. A centralized government aids in defense and keeping order. The patriots meeting at the Constitutional Convention took that idea and molded it into a country with a strong central government run solely by the free people.
The most important right entailed to citizens by the U.S. Constitution is that of the right to vote. By voting, each citizen is expressing his or her opinions on the running of their government, and showing support for the officials they believe will do the best job. This right allows them to choose the people who will make their laws and govern them. It gives them the power to decide the path their government takes and who takes control.
The delegates who wrote the original framework for the U.S. Constitution were not only creating a completely new type of government; they were also setting the path for the future of America. They succeeded in their goals, but they also ended up building a country and economic system that would quickly rise to become a dominant world power in the decades to come. The construction of United States’ powerful government and its free society would ensure that it stayed safe and the people were not oppressed. Its economy would grow rapidly on the capitalist system of free trade and its military would become the largest in the world. Their end result was a country in which its citizens could experience a free press, an absence of religious tyranny and most importantly the right to vote.