Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) is going head-to-head with No Labels, the political third party that has pledged to run a “Unity Ticket” in 2024 should the two major parties “select candidates the vast majority of Americans don’t want to vote for.”
Secretary Bellows has challenged the validity of No Labels’ 6,000-plus enrollment in the state, claiming that the group misled voters to believe they were signing a petition to support the party, not changing their party registration.
These concerns prompted her to send a cease-and-desist letter to the No Labels Party, as well as individual letters to each of the party’s registrants.
No Labels has adamantly refuted these claims, stating that their operations are completely aboveboard and that those who enrolled in the party were provided with voter registration cards issued by the State of Maine, which are clearly labeled as such.
Leaders of the No Labels Party slammed Bellows’ actions as “unacceptable and undemocratic.”
On May 12, 2023, Bellows issued a statement raising concerns that some of those who registered for the No Labels party may have been unaware they were doing so.
“We were concerned after hearing reports of dozens of voters alleging they were unaware they had been enrolled in the No Labels Party and are working to ensure every voter understands their rights,” Bellows said.
Bellows then sent a letter to the more than 6,000 individuals who had registered for the No Labels Party, informing them that her office had “received reports that some Maine residents who completed paperwork to enroll in the No Labels Party were told that they were signing a petition in support of the No Labels Party.”
“These voters have stated that they did not understand that the paperwork they were asked to complete would have the effect of enrolling them in the No Labels Party, thus disenrolling them from any party in which they were previously enrolled,” she wrote.
According to reporting from NBC News, Bellows also sent a cease-and-desist letter to No Labels directly.
“These voters have provided similar accounts of how they came to be enrolled in the party: that they were approached by No Labels Party organizers in public places and asked to sign a “petition” to support the new party,” she wrote in the letter. “These voters have further stated that No Labels organizers did not disclose—and the voters did not understand—that No Labels was asking them to change their party enrollment.”
“To the extent representatives of No Labels are telling Maine voters that, by filling out voter registration cards, they are signing or supporting a ‘petition,’ No Labels should instruct them to immediately cease and desist from doing so,” she ordered. “In addition, when No Labels representatives are asking Maine voters to sign voter registration cards, they should be affirmatively disclosing to those voters that they are asking them to enroll in the No Labels party.”
On June 7, 2023, Joe Lieberman and Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. of No Labels responded to Bellows in a Portland Press Herald op-ed.
“It is an essential principle of our democracy: The people have a right to vote and have a right to select the candidates and parties they want to vote for according to the laws, not the partisan whims of officials,” they wrote. “But you’d never know it by what’s going on in Maine, where Secretary of State Shanna Bellows took the unprecedented step of sending a targeted mailing directed at all 6,456 citizens of Maine who had recently registered as No Labels Party members, questioning if they really meant to join No Labels and casting aspersions on the organization.”
Lieberman and Chavis went on to directly rebut Bellows’ claim that voters were misled.
“No Labels gave detailed written guidance to all our organizers and volunteers in Maine on following all the laws. The form they used was provided by the state and featured ‘MAINE VOTER REGISTRATION APPLICATION’ at the top in all-capital bold letters. To change their affiliation, a voter needed to individually check ‘Other Qualifying party’ and then personally write in the words ‘No Labels,'” they said. “To date, hundreds of city and town clerks across Maine have verified that 6,456 No Labels voter registrations are valid.”
They acknowledged that it is possible “in such a large-scale project” for some voters to have “mistaken No Labels’ effort for a petition drive and/or that a small number of No Labels’ organizers could have deviated from the clearly written instructions they were given.”
But they said that Bellows has not responded to their request for more information about specific instances of this occurring.
Nevertheless, No Labels states that they are taking action to implement training measures designed specifically to prevent any future misunderstandings of this nature.
Lieberman and Chavis then characterized Bellows’ letter as “unacceptable and undemocratic” on the grounds that it “unnecessarily intimidated thousands of Maine voters.”
Former State Sen. Dick Woodbury, an Independent from Yarmouth who has been involved with No Labels for years, spoke to the Portland Press Herald about the action Bellows has taken against the party.
“What voters are signing is just a basic registration form that you sign when enrolling in any party, and it seems like this group is being treated differently somehow,” he said.
Voter enrollment numbers can be of particular importance to third parties vying for ballot access in Maine.
Under state law, a proposed political party must have at least 5,000 registrants in order to be eligible to host candidates in the state’s primary election season. Voters who have registered with a political party, however, may only cast a ballot in that party’s primary. As of 2024, registered voters who have opted to remain unaffiliated will have the ability to choose the primary in which they would like to participate.
