The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) sent a letter to Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows offering to show specific voter roll inaccuracies found after the 2024 Election. PILF found tens of thousands of deceased and duplicate registrations scattered around Maine.
The letter comes after PILF lawfully obtained Maine’s full voter roll and conducted a forensic review using obituaries, the Social Security Death Index, and national voter files. Among the findings were 18,453 deceased registrants,1,498 same-address duplicate or triplicate registrations, caused by minor spelling or formatting differences (e.g., “St. Claire” vs. “St Claire”), and 902 registrants with second registrations in New York, Washington, and elsewhere.
PILF’s letter comes following scrutiny of Maine’s transparency practices surrounding its voter rolls. In a 2020 lawsuit, PILF sued the state for refusing to provide public access to the voter roll, a right guaranteed under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
In internal communications uncovered during the lawsuit, Secretary Bellows’ office flagged PILF and other organizations for government staff to discredit and attack on social media. Other emails show coordination with left-wing advocacy groups to portray PILF and even other sitting Secretaries of State as purveyors of disinformation in the lead-up to congressional hearings.
“Secretary Bellows has been caught filtering requests for voting data through a partisan lens and soliciting input from ideological allies,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams. “We are more concerned about cleaning up Maine’s voter rolls than getting involved in an ideological argument.”
The letter to Secretary Bellows can be found here.
MEDIA CONTACT
Douglas Blair 503-203-5599 dblair@publicinterestlegal.org