Will Shenna Bellows Thwart the Will of Mainers with Tricky Wording? How Her Effort to Quash Voter ID Plays Out in November Will Ultimately Tell

Maine’s Secretary of State will imminently release the ballot wording for a referendum question to go before voters this November asking whether or not they approve of requiring some form of identification to vote. If Shenna Bellows’ initial draft of that wording is any indication, she is banking on deceptive language to kill the measure.

Last month, Bellows’ office released the following wording for comment:

“Do you want to change Maine election laws to require voters to show ID before voting, end ongoing absentee voting for seniors and people with disabilities, ban prepaid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, eliminate two days of absentee voting, and make other changes to our elections?”

On April 11, the 30-day comment period closed, and the Secretary of State’s 15 (working) day to “consider” those comments is just about up, meaning the final language is about to be released.

As the late Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin once mused, it doesn’t matter who votes — what matters is who counts the votes. Now that Maine’s chief elections cop, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, is a declared candidate for the Democrat nomination to succeed Governor Janet Mills (D) in 2026, how she carries out the constitutionally-defined duties of her current office will naturally be viewed through a sharper lens.

How Bellows’ tries to stack the deck with misleading suggestions, such as the original one that the Voter ID initiative would deny seniors and handicapped persons access to absentee ballots, will be a bellwether of whether she intends to continue using her office as a partisan cudgel all the way through the Democratic primary next year.

In January, the Dinner Table PAC, a conservative grassroots organization headquartered in Richmond, Maine, successfully submitted over 170,000 signatures — well over twice what was required — to put the Voter ID question before voters.

[RELATED: Mainers to Decide on Voter ID Laws This November]

Alex Titcomb, the group’s director, is not surprised at the prospect that Secretary of State might abuse her position when it comes to phrasing the question she is compelled to put on the ballot.

“They’re going to make it sound like the sky is falling,” Titcomb told The Maine Wire on Tuesday. Bellows and a coalition of far left groups have little choice, he explained, because simply put the majority of Mainers support a requirement that voters prove they are who they say they are before casting ballots.

In 2023, a resounding majority of Maine voters, 63 percent, told pollsters at the University of New Hampshire they would support a Voter ID law. Nationally, that percentage surges higher still, to 84 percent according to a Gallup poll of Americans conducted late last year.

[RELATED: The Vast Majority of Americans Favor Photo ID Requirements, Proof of Citizenship for Voting: Gallup]

But this public support does little to persuade the ideologically-charged opponents of Voter ID initiatives. According to the League of Women Voters, they amount to voter suppression. Bellows herself goes further still:

“Forcing people to carry a specific type of photo identification to vote would result in logistical challenges, financial burdens and potential discrimination,” she said two years ago.

By this logic, obtaining a basic form of identification is a challenge too daunting for many Mainers to overcome. The same logic directly contradicts her efforts to enlist citizens in signing up for Real IDs, or obtaining drivers’ licenses — both seemingly mundane, statutory duties that fall under her office.

But wielding her pen like a sword to achieve the political objectives that seem to matter to Bellows more than functional ones is nothing new. Earlier this month, backs of a People’s Veto effort directed at Governor Mills’ biennial budget said as much.

[RELATED: Shenna Bellows Drafts Misleading Ballot Question for Second Time in Two Years]

“We do feel that the wording (People’s Veto) is very leading and just by the way let’s go back down memory lane for a second. Back in March 2023 the people that brought the ballot forward…they felt that their question was very leading. She rejected their compromise. They ended up running to the courthouse and the judge told the Secretary to change the wording,” Rep. Gary Drinkwater (R-Milford) told WVOM at the time.

The link to Bellows’ original draft of the language for the Voter ID question has been removed from the Secretary of State’s website, and her office did not immediately respond to a request for information about when the revised language will be made available.