Voters cast ballots at the Expo Center in Portland, Maine during the 2023 November election. (Emma Davis/ Maine Morning Star)
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said the unsubstantiated claims of noncitizen voting from a conservative Maine website — which have been reiterated by legislative Republicans and the Republican National Committee — are setting the stage to eventually cast doubt on the Nov. 5 election results.
“It does seem to be part of a larger pattern around the country where certain partisan operatives are making these accusations about noncitizen voting to decrease trust in our elections,” Bellows, a Democrat, told Maine Morning Star, “and lay the groundwork to challenge results if they don’t win.”
In recent weeks, accusations of non-citizen voting across the country have come from Republican lawmakers and candidates, including the party’s presidential nominee Donald Trump.
State lawmakers in Maine joined the chorus this week after the Maine Wire, a website owned by conservative think tank Maine Policy Institute, published an article alleging six noncitizens are registered to vote in Maine by comparing voter rolls against self-reported status on medical records, which the website has refused to turn over to the state’s constitutional officers.
The national party has also taken interest in the accusations in Maine. Jonathan Moseley, election integrity counsel for the Republican National Committee, and Ben Harwell, the committee’s Maine counsel, wrote to Bellows requesting that she dispel any notion of the illegal registration and voting, and Bellows responded in a letter Thursday detailing Maine’s election processes for the RNC.
Noncitizen voting is illegal at both the state and federal levels, the severity of which — a felony and deportable offense — Bellows and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, also a Democrat, underscored in their letter to the website in response to its call for a state investigation.
“We are committed to investigating and prosecuting such violation to the fullest extent of the law,” the constitutional officers wrote. However, in that letter they requested information to locate the six alleged illegal voters. It is illegal for the officers to access medical records that are protected under federal and state law.
Nationally, studies, including those conducted by conservative think tanks, have found noncitizen voting to be extremely rare. In recent Maine history, there have been earlier instances of Republican leadership pushing ultimately disproved claims of voter fraud.
In 2012, Maine Republican Party Chair Charlie Webster claimed groups of unknown Black people showed up in some rural towns to vote on Election Day. He later admitted to making the claims with no evidence. Webster also claimed college students illegally voted in Maine, which then-Secretary of State Charlie Summers, a Republican, investigated and found no instances of fraud.
However, the claims date back to the establishment of voter registration systems, which were established as a means to disenfranchise immigrants.
And Bellows is not alone in expressing worry that the largely unsubstantiated claims will be used to sow doubt in the upcoming election results.
The accusations
The Maine Wire published a story on Oct. 10 alleging that it identified six noncitizens registered to vote in Maine, and that five of those people voted in previous elections. The accusations are based on documentation of immigration status people self-select when applying for MaineCare, Maine’s Medicaid program, which was shared with the website by an unnamed source. The records also indicated they had “severe” intellectual disabilities and required interpreters, according to the Maine Wire.
On Oct. 11, Bellows and Frey sent a letter to the Maine Wire requesting identifying information of the six people allegedly illegally registered to vote, copies of the MaineCare records referenced and any other documentation that might be relevant to investigate the matter.
Declining to provide the information, the Maine Wire’s legal counsel wrote in response that editor-in-chief Steve Robinson had concerns about revealing sources and claimed the Secretary of State’s Office and Attorney General’s Office already has access to the information to identify the voters.
The Secretary of State’s Office cannot access the MaineCare records held by the Department of Health and Human Services records, given the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and state statute. The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the matter at this time.
Robinson, the article author and website’s editor in chief, did not respond to Maine Morning Star’s question about whether this barrier changes his decision to withhold the evidence from the state’s constitutional officers.
Emily Cook, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office, said confirming someone’s citizenship, when it is questioned, is not always a simple task.
“If someone has easy access to their birth certificate or a passport, it can be resolved pretty easily, but this isn’t always the case,” Cook said. “There is no database in the country that is a perfect database of citizens, so often other methods must be used.”
The Secretary of State’s Office has experience with this through its work with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. For example, since a 2019 law change that now requires proof of legal presence to obtain or renew a Maine driver’s license or state ID, the Secretary of State’s Office has found several Aroostook County residents having trouble proving their citizenship because they were born in hospitals in Canada to American parents who have since died.
State lawmakers, national party leadership amplify claims
Republicans on the state and national level have since repeated the claims of noncitizen voting in Maine.
On Oct. 15, Maine House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor) wrote a letter to Bellows and Frey calling for an investigation into the accusations.
Faulkingham and the Maine Wire story both said that the six people are only a small sample of immigrants in Maine who could be registered to vote and voting in U.S. elections illegally. Neither Faulkingham nor Robinson responded to Maine Morning Star’s question as to whether they are alleging that Maine has a broad problem with non-citizen voting.
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows delivers donuts to poll workers in Portland during Maine’s June 11 primary election. (Photo by Evan Popp/Maine Morning Star)
“The integrity of our elections is important,” Faulkingham wrote to Maine Morning Star. “The Secretary of State should help avoid even the appearance of impropriety by conducting a review of the voter rolls to ensure this is not happening. She can do it without violating the law if she wants to.”
In a letter in response to Faulkingham, Bellows said that she is taking the allegations seriously but that, at this point, they are only allegations — writing, “and the person making them seems unpatriotically more intent on degrading public confidence in our election system rather than helping to ensure the integrity of the election we are currently conducting.”
Further, Bellows added, “Perhaps given your close working relationship with the Maine Wire and as leader of your Caucus, you could provide some sensible guidance to those who are withholding evidence of potentially ongoing crimes.”
Bellows explained that she cannot access the DHHS records the Maine Wire claims to have used to find voter fraud.
“It is potentially unlawful for the Maine Wire to have the DHHS records they claim to have in their possession, just as it would be likely unlawful for me to have them,” Bellows wrote. “Privacy is an important and valued part of Maine and federal law that we in the Department take very seriously. If you and your members disagree with this principle and think that medical records – which do not necessarily denote current citizenship status – should be available to hundreds of municipal clerks, registrars, and other election officials, you would likely need to propose a change in state law and advocate for changes to longstanding federal privacy laws.”
Another limitation Bellows cited is the National Voter Registration Act, a federal law that prohibits the systematic removal of people from lists of registered voters within 90 days of a federal election.
In her interview with Maine Morning Star, Bellows also said any suggestion of widespread noncitizen voting without evidence is an insult to Maine’s state and local election workers.
“The voter registration process in Maine requires that registrars at the municipal level are reviewing identity and residency and the voter registration application for everyone who is registering to vote,” Bellows said. “If you have allegations of a crime, you have a responsibility to provide that evidence to law enforcement so that it can be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of a law.”
Also on Oct. 15, Maine Senate Republicans issued a joint statement in which they wrote the accusations are evidence of the need for a state law requiring identification at the polls, adding to ongoing efforts from conservatives in Maine and Republican lawmakers at large.
To suggest policy solutions for a problem that they refuse to provide evidence to substantiate is highly questionable. We cannot let unsubstantiated accusations deny eligible voters their freedom to cast a ballot.
– Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows
“To suggest policy solutions for a problem that they refuse to provide evidence to substantiate is highly questionable,” Bellow said. “We cannot let unsubstantiated accusations deny eligible voters their freedom to cast a ballot.”
Maine is among 15 states that do not require a voter to present identification while at the polls, whereas 36 states require some form of identification to cast a ballot. Voting rights advocates point to research that has found voter ID requirements block many legitimate voters — especially young, Black and Latino voters — from voting.
Maine Senate Republicans did not respond to a request for comment.
A nationwide pattern
Texas. Alabama. Nevada. North Carolina. Oregon. Alaska. Iowa. Idaho. Indiana. Virginia. Maine is far from alone in dealing with recent accusations of noncitizen voting.
Dax Goldstein, senior counsel with the States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing secure elections, underscored that voters can be confident in election security.
“The truth is, our election officials have a system of checks and balances including cross-checking federal and state databases to help make sure only eligible voters register and vote,” Goldstein said. “These dedicated, experienced public servants are working hard to make sure our elections are accurate, fair and secure.”
Noncitizen voter registration and voting does happen, but the incidence is extraordinarily rare. Votes by noncitizens account for between 0.0003 and 0.001% of all votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which also found reported incidents of voter fraud are largely caused by clerical errors or bad data matching practices.
Recent accusations in other states have resulted in attempts to purge voter rolls weeks before the Nov. 5 election.
On Thursday, two of Indiana’s top elected leaders announced they’d requested federal aid in scrutinizing the citizenship status of more than 585,000 registered voters — more than one in 10 residents on the voter rolls.
The National Voter Registration Act, which Bellows mentioned, is also likely to limit any voter roll maintenance so close to Election Day.
The federal law is why the U.S. Department of Justice is suing Virginia, where the governor signed an executive order exactly 90 days out from Nov. 5 requiring “Daily Updates to the Voter List.” It was also cited by a federal judge who this week blocked Texas from purging voters who the state sought to remove, which included U.S. citizens who were naturalized and eligible to vote.
Trump’s campaign has sued several states, including those considered swing states, over allegations of noncitizen voting, despite their lawsuits offering little evidence of the phenomenon. In Nevada, for example, the lawsuit does not document or even allege a single specific instance of a noncitizen voting in the state.
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