AUGUSTA, MAINE – Secretary of State Shenna Bellows today condemned false allegations made by the Maine GOP that attempt to sow mistrust in recent Maine election results.
“Maine elections are free, safe and secure, period,” said Secretary Bellows. “Voter list maintenance is a routine, ongoing effort born of collaboration between trusted local and state election officials. I am particularly proud of the extraordinary progress we have made in maintaining our voter rolls under my administration. Implementation of new technology like automatic voter registration at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and online voter registration has helped Maine make great strides in data accuracy.”
After every election, voter records are analyzed to identify duplicate records, typically created after someone recently moved to a new municipality. To ensure uniformity throughout the state, and because duplicate records impact multiple towns, correction of duplicate records is managed by state election officials. This is part of the routine voter list maintenance conducted by state and local officials and reported regularly to the Legislature. A report of the 2024 voter list maintenance was delivered to the Maine Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee earlier this year. In 2024, 1,191 duplicate records were removed from the statewide voter registration database.
Since this report, and in addition to day-to-day routine voter list maintenance, 180,584 voter records have been cancelled for being in inactive status for two general elections. These were among almost 250,000 records that were identified as not voting in the two prior federal elections in 2022, which resulted in 221,523 records being put into inactive status.
“This is not the first time sensational lies have been told about elections, designed to scare voters and undermine trust in our elections,” said Secretary Bellows. “If your neighbor’s house is broken into, you call the cops, not issue a press release, not only because it’s the logical next step but also because it’s the right thing to do. It is a crime to vote twice in any election, and anyone who has knowledge of such a crime has a responsibility to report those crimes to the proper authorities for investigation and prosecution. My nonpartisan staff do a great job investigating any and all concerns brought to our office.”
Knowingly casting multiple votes in the same election is a Class C crime under Title 21-A §674. Allegations of duplicate voting are thoroughly researched and referred to the Maine Attorney General’s Office for investigation and prosecution. Following the 2020 election, two cases were identified, and the individuals involved were prosecuted.
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