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.
The resulting cross-check revealed that, of the 18 legal and illegal aliens, six were registered to vote and five had votes cast under their names since 2016.
Following the Maine Wire’s report, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) sent a letter to the Maine Wire asking the news outlet to turn over all records related to the report on non-citizen voting.
“The allegations in your article, if true, may constitute serious crimes under Maine law,” Frey and Bellows wrote in their Oct. 11 letter. The Constitutional Officers asked for copies of all identifying information on the six illegally registered non-citizens, as well as complete copies of the underlying whistleblower documents.
Complying with such a request, however, would expose the whistleblower who turned over the original Medicaid records, and on that basis, the Maine Wire declined to provide the Attorney General and the Secretary of State with the information they requested.
The report also triggered a wave of letters from Republicans, including the Republican National Committee’s election integrity group and Maine Republican leaders, demanding that state officials conduct an investigation or implement new election safeguards.
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.
Frey expressed frustration over the Maine Wire’s refusal, stating, “Our request is solely about protecting election integrity. We need the names to ensure no fraud was perpetrated on the public.”
Once again, the Maine Wire refused to comply with this request because the disclosure of any names could potentially allow the Maine Attorney General’s Office or the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to determine who might have leaked sensitive Medicaid records to the Maine Wire.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly known as HIPAA, established stringent protections for sensitive medical records as well as harsh punishments for individuals who improperly leak or disclose medical records, such as Medicaid billing information. Those who violate HIPPA risk civil penalties of up to $50,000 per violation as well as incarceration.
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 records obtained by the Maine Wire do not indicate how these non-citizens became illegally registered to vote or whether they themselves illegally cast ballots. However, details within the records—including medical information about the cognitive capacity of several of the illegally registered voters—suggest that a third party was most likely involved in helping the non-citizens illegally register to vote and potentially even fill out their ballots.
Since the initial report, the Maine Wire has taken steps to share access to redacted versions of the underlying records with two of Maine’s largest media outlets, including one major newspaper and one major television station, and neither outlet has been able to dispute the facts originally reported.
Furthermore, 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.
“I’ve seen the records the Maine Wire used to show that non-citizens are registered to vote in Maine’s elections,” said Republican Senate Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook).
“It’s clear that MaineCare beneficiaries with Alien Statuses other than ‘U.S. Citizen’ are registered to vote and votes have been cast under their names since 2016,” Stewart said.
“I’m disappointed that Gov. Mills, [Attorney General] Frey, and [Secretary of State] Bellows have decided to play politics rather than investigate seriously this clear and present threat to Maine’s elections,” he said. “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 (R-Winter Harbor) 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.
However, Bellows responded that doing so would constitution a violation of the laws governing the privacy of MaineCare data.
Faulkingham countered by sending an Oct. 21 letter to Mills asking that she instruct Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Sarah Gagne-Holmes to use the voter file — which is available to members of the public willing to pay for it — to proceed with an investigation into non-citizen voting.
“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 (CVR) 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. “This process should protect a patient’s health information through [HIPPA], as no protected health conditions will be disclosed.”
“Through your direction, DHHS Commissioner Gagne-Holmes can easily produce a report that reveals how many ineligible voters are registered to vote, how often they have voted, and in what election years and jurisdictions,” Faulkingham said. “Once again, this process can inform state policymakers and election officials of possible electoral fraud without violating privacy laws.”
“As lawmakers, we realize that this request will not fix the potential fraud in our system as that is the responsibility of the Secretary of State,” he said. “However, this information can provide the Maine people the insight into how comprehensive a problem we may have on our hands.”
Mills, who is currently serving her second term as governor, offered a response to Faulkingham in the form of a statement to News Center Maine (WCSH), a left-leaning local TV station based in Portland.
“The Attorney General and the Secretary of State have requested information and records from the Maine Wire to investigate their allegations,” Mills said.
“The Maine Wire has thus far declined. As Secretary Bellows has said, if the Maine Wire wants to help ensure the integrity of Maine’s elections, they would need to respond differently to that request,” said Mills.
Despite the requests from Mills, Frey, and Bellows, the Maine Wire continues to decline to provide information to the State that would allow investigators to identify a whistleblower and potentially prosecute non-citizens who may in fact be victims of identity theft.
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.
The non-random sample size obtained by the Maine Wire included 18 non-citizens, including both legal aliens and illegal aliens, all of whom are legally prohibited from voting as they are not natural born U.S. citizens or naturalized U.S. citizens. Of that sample, six were illegally registered to vote, according to the Secretary of State’s records, meaning 33 percent of the sample.
According to the Maine Immigrant Rights Coalition (MIRC), a 501(c)3 nonprofit that helps migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers navigate life in Maine, the total population of noncitizens residing in the Pine Tree State is more than 87,000.
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.
The extent to which non-citizen ballots are illegally entering Maine’s elections — whether it’s 600, 6,000, 16,000 or more — is a question that could have vast implications for Maine’s most recent elections, as well as the state’s future elections.
At the state level, illegal ballots cast by non-citizens or in the names of non-citizens could easily provide the margin of victory for State House of Representatives and State Senate elections. Those illegally cast votes could even be large enough to sway state legislative races so as to alter the balance of partisan power at the State House in Augusta.
In 2022, for example, Sen. Tim Nangle (D-Cumberland) won his race against Republican Gary Plummer by 346 votes. Similarly, the 2022 race for State House District 143 between Rep. Ann Marie Fredericks (R-Sanford) and Democrat Wesley Davie was decided by just 178 votes. In another nearby race, Rep. Anne-Marie Mastraccio (D-Sanford) beat Republican Pamela Buck by just 199 votes.
At the federal level, the scope of non-citizen voting in Maine could even have ramifications for the composition of the U.S. Congress.
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. Given the large number of non-citizens known to reside in the CD-2 cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine’s second and fifth largest cities by population, the number of non-citizen votes could have easily surpassed Golden’s margin of victory in that race.
The same illegal votes impacting congressional elections in northern Maine could also tip the scales in the most important of all elections: the presidential election.
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.
When former Republican President Donald Trump ran for re-election against then-Vice President Joe Biden, he won the Electoral College vote by 22,396 ballots. However, in his first election against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump only won the northern congressional district by 14,582 votes.
All of these scenarios are hypotheticals, however, until the state of Maine conducts an investigation to determine precisely how many non-citizens are registered to in Maine and how many times ballots have been illegally cast under their names.
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. That’s part of the reason why U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, a Biden appointee, on Friday reversed an effort by the Commonwealth of Virginia to remove alleged noncitizens from its list of registered voters. Those same rules apply to Maine, meaning that even registered voters identified as “2-Legal Alien” and “3-Other” in state Medicaid records could not legally be removed from the voter rolls.
However, some Republican elected officials are looking forward to the coming legislative session with eye toward fixing vulnerabilities in Maine’s election rules as well as investigating how noncitizens became registered to vote in the first place.
“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 (R-Phillips) told the Maine Wire in a written statement.
“It’s important that we clear the voting rolls of ineligible voters and install election integrity measures, like Voter ID. But we must also investigate whether NGOs, political activists, or foreign organizations have facilitated this illegal behavior to influence Maine’s elections,” Soboleski said.
Under Maine law (21-A M.R.S. §33), the Attorney General is specifically authorized by the State Legislature to investigate alleged violations of Maine’s election laws.
Although Maine’s current Attorney General, Aaron Frey, has signalled an interest in prosecuting the individuals identified by the Maine Wire’s reporting, he has not indicated any intention to investigate whether third-party political activists or paid canvassers have played a role in getting legal or illegal aliens registered to vote.
In December, Maine’s State Senate and House of Representatives will form a unicameral body to elect by majority vote new constitutional officers, including, potentially, replacements for both Frey and Bellows.
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.
The records show some noncitizens registered to vote in Maine have severe medical conditions and intellectual disabilities. When coupled with a total lack of English speaking ability, those medical conditions make it unlikely that the individuals registered or voted independently or knowingly.
“If any person or group exploited migrant populations for political advantage, they must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. “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.
However, no public official has disputed that it’s entirely possible — and indeed, easy — for a noncitizen to become registered to vote, either wittingly or unwittingly.
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.
This signing may or may not take place in the presence of a qualified translator who understand election laws and appropriately advises their noncitizen clients.
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.
According to Doris Rodriguez, a Spanish-language interpreter who helps asylum seekers obtain welfare benefits, she witnessed a Portland DHHS worker attempt to give a Venezuelan asylum seeker voter registration paperwork.
The Venezuelan woman had applied for benefits using a returned I-589 request for asylum, which was a clear indication that she was a paroled illegal alien — not a U.S. citizen or a naturalized U.S. citizen.
That means the welfare clerk should have known that the asylum seeker was ineligible to vote and that helping her register to vote would jeopardize her asylum claim.
“I said, ‘What do you mean? She can’t vote. She’s here illegally,’” said Rodriguez.
“I told them she can’t vote—she’s not a U.S. citizen. Offering her that form was setting her up for deportation,” said Rodriguez.
“I said, ‘Why would you ask her that?’ I mean, if she votes, she goes to prison. It’s a federal offense,” said Rodriguez.
“[S]he kind of looked down at the paper and she said, ‘Well, that’s what I was told to do, to ask,’ you know,” she said.
“She said that she was told by the head of by DHHS to ask the clients that are requesting benefits if they want to register to vote, even if they’re not legal citizens,” said Rodriguez.
A spokesperson from DHHS did not reply to questions about why DHHS welfare clerks would offer voter registration forms to noncitizens.
Note: The Maine Wire continues to make best efforts to share the records underlying our reporting on noncitizen voting with media outlets in Maine and nationally. To date, the Maine Wire has not refused to share access to these records with any journalist who has asked to see the records and has agreed to meet certain conditions to protect our sources. Media outlets can contact Steve Robinson at Robinson@themainewire.com.
Wouldn’t be a shame if both sides cheated so dramatically and obviously, like millions of votes from a state that has less than 2 million people, the whole process would be in doubt and safeguards would need to be installed? That would be terrible.
No biggie.
Now…..if top Democrats launched an authentic investigation of illegal voting….THAT would be shocking news.
Just vote them out and make proper rules for voting. Vote out King, Pingree, Jarrit and then the Governor.
Maine would never investigate illegals voting nor “residences” who vote in multiple states
Why are NON CITIZENS getting any of our tax dollars, let alone voting?
Is anybody surprised the Democrats don’t want clean elections. Their party platform should just say “the ends justify the means”. Or better “do as I say and not as I do”. Their voters are the only group of people who blindly vote against their best interest.
They know Damn well where these people are getting registered!! Look at all the Town/City halls and DMV places!!! Look at the big cities that have highest influx of Illegals… follow the trail.
How about DEPORTING anyone who votes who’s a non citizen and jailing any person who registers an illegal.
Lol, you have to be “Special” to think that Bellows and Mills care about fair/legal voting in Maine. You know, like “Rank choice voting”, Dem’s can’t actually win without rigging how the vote goes!
Face it – the reality is that all democrats are by nature completely without any moral structure and balance and will do whatever they can to ensure that their mindset is what sits in office. It is not now or ever has been about money it is only to control and maintain power over others.
i stood in line at South Portland City hall for 45 minutes last week to renew my car registration because there were 3 illegals in front of me trying to register cars they didn’t have titles for. Can anyone say stolen?
Of course they decline to do so. You’re asking them to investigate themselves. If they did and if it somehow ended up being a legit investigation they would then have to disclose the results.
These are agenda driven corrupt government officials. What scares me is that we are asked to trust deceitful Bellows and Mills AG on voting matters.
Our like minded friends had better vote. Maine is in deep trouble if these carpetbaggers remain in power. In a few more years Maine will be completely unrecognizable from life the way we knew it. Good people need to wake up!!!!
Why would a democrat investigate something that they believe favors them. But it does show the people what side is really for a fair election. People are starting to see that they aint the party of decades ago.
Janet Mills and Shenna Blowhard Bellows should be behind bars.
That makes as much sense as politicians having an oversight committee of politicians overseeing spending!
We all know Joe Biden, Kamala, and the entirety of the Democrat Party opened the border on purpose, but nobody seems to ask why? Sure, it’s to import new voters once they all get amnesty, but do you really believe the gang of thugs that is the Democrat Party are waiting around for this spectacular effort to bear fruit with amnesty, that could be years away? Do you really believe they haven’t been registering these “newcomers” the second they came across illegally?
Look up executive Order 14019, issued by Biden in March 2021. It requires all government agencies to distribute voter registration forms to anyone and everyone it encounters – under the guise of fighting racism. It even REQUIRES that these govt workers help fill them out! Who would need help filling out such a form? People who don’t speak English. Why do you think federal and state govt agencies are providing all kinds of programs and services to help migrants/illegals? Every mere interaction with a migrant is another voter registration form filled out. Harvesters/NGO’s will take it from here.
Democrats are cheating again and using taxpayer money to fund it.
Non-citizens, and especially illegal aliens do not have the exact same rights as citizens per federal law. Furthermore no one, including any full citizen, has fourth amendment protections to freely flout and violate the law. A legitimate search warrant pierces any protection that the 4th might normally allow. The State of Maine has a valid complaint filed, so coping to it would be a violation of privacy is pure cowardess to challenge a key Democrat voter block, and threatens their power as such and that is all this controversy is.
This one should be obvious and simple: prevent any identifiable non-citizen from casting a ballot through the voter rolls when either they show up at the polls, or check registration status to ensure eligibility with a mail or other provisional ballot. If they actually do vote or attempt to vote illegally, then arrest them, and if any other non-profit aided or abetted those illegally voting, then also prosecute the whole thing under RICO as a conspiracy, which it would be. These morons are brazen, and will probably give you all of the evidence needed to convict, as they stupidly brag and do not even conceal it anymore.
As far as trusting the Maine Secretary of State, forget it, she is a mentally blind stooge follower of the communist governor. Thank God she is term limited next time. I was considering moving to Maine, but they are too backward, as I moved out of New Mexico for the same reason, I did not want to live in the 19th century politicwise. The progressives are not that at all, in fact they are regressive in their ideology (i.e. Maoist CCP or Soviet Union), dull and dumb failed policies. But they just gotta try em’.
Maine’s electors should be de-certified.
Also didn’t Bellows have her hat handed to her when the SCOTUS determined that she illegally tried to singlehandedly and unilaterally remove Trump off of the presidential ballot in Maine? Is it because Magoo might have lost Maine? Now that is over, does Queen Harris actually still have a chance there? Yes, because of the rich elites manufacturing votes at whim. They are credentialed, some of them, but remain uneducated, rote memory cue card readers without an independent thought in their mush brains. But they are wealthy, ahhhh yes, now I understand. As Michael Douglas masterfully playing Gordon Gekko said, “The richest one percent owns half our country’s wealth. One-third comes from hard work (i.e. unrealized capital gains that Democrats now want to steal, including possibly your home), and the rest from inheritance; interest upon interest from widows and their idiot sons, and what I do, real estate and stock speculation. It’s all bullshit.” I suspect that almost all Democrats that are not free market capitalists are in the carried interest category, and I know a lot of them are exactly from that crowd. Non-productive losers as is Magoo, his father, and the entire family, not to mention the Kennedys, Cheneys, and Bushes.
Of course they do! What else would you expect from lawless, treasonous, fascist pigs?!
One more double talking Democrat example. The unethical nurse whom refused to quarantine after returning symptomatic from an Ebola hotzone. She claimed to have tested negative, but tests are not infallible, take it from a Ph.D. biochemist with a Master’s in analytical biochemistry. However, she threatened to not vote for then governor LePage whom was only trying to protect Maine citizens from potential Ebola exposure, given that another nurse from Dallas traveled to Cleveland around the same time while infected from a patient that she treated, whom died from Ebola while she was enroute. Then said nurse pledged her undying support for Mills, yes Mills, the genius who wanted to force vaccination and quarantine on anyone whom entered the state, asymptomatic or otherwise, without so much as a preliminary hearing, for a virus that was so widespread that nobody was any more prone to catch it than anybody else, rendering her spread prevention methods futile in its effect and results, from a virus at least 2 to 3 orders of magnitude less fatal than Ebola. Not to mention the nursing home scandal with the same virus, which of course was conveniently avoided by said officials own relatives, if they had any residing in nursing homes back then.
Back to the double standard finale: Upon the U.S. Army exiting the Ebola country(ies) after setting up makeshift hospital tents well outside the hotzones, they were required, not optioned, to quarantine in Italy for 28 days, not the usual 14-21 days, as a precaution before returning to America.
All of this forked tongue nonsense driveled hubris from the party of “hands off my body”, “preserve democracy and institutions” (but only those that concur with them), “eliminate fascism” (which they are, yet project on their opponents), and all the while “we must limit free speech” (but only that which disagrees with their ideology). Well I agree, their speech should be limited as foolhardy, and ill-advised bias to be ignored. As one whom has trained many medical professionals in my academic career, the aforementioned nurse has blatantly shown herself to be an unethical, immoral, incompetent self-aggrandizing idiot whom cares only about herself. I shutter to think of anyone being a patient of hers, as she compares somewhat to the “The Good Nurse” from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, albeit without the intent, only mere negligence. Just my opinion.
Doesn’t Maine have a whistleblower protection law?
And where are the “top Republicans” on this deal, hiding? Why havent THEY looked into this obvious illegal unconstitutional act?
There are no words.
Instead they would like to investigate who ratted them out. They had a good scam going.
Allowing illegals to vote means you are illegally holding office. And any powers and authority granted to you are null and void. We will act accordingly.