Maine's top Democratic officials are declining to make any new efforts to secure Maine's elections against non-citizen voting in the wake of an exclusive report from the Maine Wire showing that non-citizens are registered to vote in Maine.
The Maine Wire's Oct. 10 report used leaked data from Medicaid, known in Maine as MaineCare, that showed the alien status of 18 individuals living in southern Maine and compared that data to voter registration information from the Maine Secretary of State's office.
Following the Maine Wire's report, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows sent a letter to the Maine Wire asking the news outlet to turn over all records related to the report on non-citizen voting.
In a second Oct. 18 letter to the Maine Wire, Attorney General Frey, writing without Bellows, narrowed the State's request to only a list of names, dates of birth, and addresses for the non-citizen voters the Maine Wire identified as being illegally registered to vote.
In addition to protecting the sources that allowed the Maine Wire to confirm that a potentially large number of non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in Maine's elections, the Maine Wire declined to release those records to the State in order to protect the identities of the non-citizens themselves.
The Maine Wire has offered access to dozens of elected officials and candidates for the State Legislature, and those who have had the opportunity to review the records have reached the same shocking conclusion originally reported by the Maine Wire: Non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in Maine and votes have been cast illegally in their names since at least 2016.
"Mainers deserve to know how and why illegal votes have been cast and counted in Maine's elections." In response to the Maine Wire's reporting, House Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham called on Bellows to conduct an investigation into how many non-citizen voters may be registered to vote in Maine and may be having votes cast in their names.
In his letter, Faulkingham suggested that Bellows compare Alien Status data from MaineCare to the voting rolls to quickly and easily identify the whole population of non-citizens who are registered to vote in Maine.
"We are calling on you as the Chief Executive Officer of Maine to instruct the Department of Health and Human Services to use all available resources to cross reference Maine's Central Voter Registration system with the alien statuses in MaineCare billing records in order to determine how many ineligible voters are in fact registered to vote," wrote Faulkingham.
Contrary to Mills' assertion, the Maine Wire's cooperation is not necessary to investigate the scope of illegal alien and legal alien voting in Maine's elections because all of the records underlying the reporting are already in the government's possession.
Although the Maine Wire's reporting has, thus far, only identified six non-citizens who are illegally registered to vote, and five who have had ballots cast illegally under their names, the full scope of illegal non-citizen voting in Maine's elections could be massive - large enough, even, to provide the margin of victory in some races.
If 65,000 to 75,000 of those individuals are above the voting age of 18, and if the percentage of illegally registered non-citizens from the Maine Wire's limited sample size is accurate at such a scale, then Maine could potentially have anywhere from 20,000 to 25,000 ineligible non-citizen voters registered to vote in its elections.
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin lost his 2018 re-election fight against Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden by less than 4,000 votes when the ranked-choice voting tabulations were finished.
If non-citizens in the Lewiston-Auburn are are registered to vote in large enough numbers, then those ineligible votes could decide which presidential candidate earns the Electoral College vote from Maine's Second Congressional District.
Based on the MainCare records obtained by the Maine Wire and the Central Voter Registration system maintained by the Secretary of State, it's clear that the number is at least six votes and potentially as many as 25,000.
Who Is Registering Non-Citizens to Vote? The Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 prevents any state from removing voters from the voting rolls within 90 days of an election.
"The details of the MaineCare records that the Maine Wire shared with me make it clear that non-citizens are registered to vote in Maine elections. However, the records also suggest that a third party is somehow inducing or encouraging these foreign nationals to violate American election laws," Rep. Mike Soboleski told the Maine Wire in a written statement.
Looming large over the scramble to earn those legislative appointments will be the matter of noncitizen voting and whether noncitizens have become registered to vote in Maine through a coordinated or planned effort.
"Priority number one for Maine's next Attorney General should be a thorough investigation into these election crimes." How Are Noncitizens Registering to Vote Amid the flurry of letters exchanged between and among the Maine Wire, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and several Republican leaders, there has been great disagreement how the state should respond to reports of noncitizen voting in Maine.
While only U.S. citizens are legally permitted to vote in federal, state, and local elections, Maine does not require voter ID at the polls.
Rather than prove U.S. citizenship, and therefore eligibility to legally vote in elections, residents of Maine are asked to sign a form confirming that they are eligible to vote.
In at least one instance reported by the Maine Wire, a woman who entered the U.S. illegally and applied for asylum status was offered voter registration paper work by a Maine welfare clerk.
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