On June 20th, 2019, Governor Janet Mills (D) signed LD 534, a bill to make ballot initiative questions easier to understand, into law with an emergency preamble — meaning it went straight into effect. It was my first and only bill of any consequence signed into law during my three terms in the state legislature.
Even then-Senator Shenna Bellows (D-Kennebec) voted for it.
The bill was titled, “An Act to Make Ballot Questions Easier to Read and Understand for Maine Voters.” When it went before the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee for a public hearing, the League of Women Voters (LWV) even testified in favor.
LWV went so far as to say, “We applaud Representative Andrews’ effort to lower the barriers to entry into our political process by ensuring that voters fully understand the language, intent, and practical consequences of ballot initiatives they are voting on, in order to make informed decisions at the polls.”
Senator Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec) served as the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee Chair and did an excellent job working on the bill with me to reach bipartisan, unanimous committee approval. The bill then went to the floor and passed both houses unanimously.
LD 534 put into law that ballot initiative questions have be written as close to a 6th grade reading level as possible, make it that a ‘Yes’ vote was for the initiative and a ‘No’ vote was against the initiative. It also required a brief explanation of what a ‘Yes’ vote actually means and what a ‘No’ vote actually means next to where you vote on the ballot. Most importantly, it required that the Secretary of State write ballot questions in a simple, clear, concise, and direct manner.
This should have cleaned up all of the past confusion and anger at how ballot questions are constructed in the state of Maine. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. LD 534 is a case study in how you can get a law passed and signed by the Governor, but the law will still be ignored by those in power. It is ignored because those in control have absolute power and face no consequence for their actions.
In 2025, we are seeing ballot questions being written by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D-Hallowell) in the most partisan frames possible. The people’s veto on the biennial budget is written to frame the people’s veto as voting for anarchy if you vote for fiscal responsibility:
“Do you want to stop most state government operations and programs, including new and ongoing state funding for cities, towns, and schools, by rejecting the state’s two-year budget?”
The question is written and framed in a manner that would force voters to interpret the available information and to vote against their own interests even if they support the people’s veto. It is a binary choice of you either support the Democrat majority biennial budget or you will have no government and no support for your town. Secretary Bellows is basically saying ‘I dare you to vote fiscal accountability.’
Next up is the Voter ID question. The ballot question for Voter ID is written in a legalese word salad, which is totally on brand for Sec. Bellows, and framed as an attack on the disabled and seniors:
“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?”
The intent of the bill, required identification for voting, is camouflaged by Bellows’ interpretation of everything she doesn’t like in the bill. Exaggeration and obfuscation were the Secretary’s quill and ink while drafting this misrepresentation for the ballot. The question is obviously written to influence people to vote against Voter ID.
I’d be willing to bet if the blob of political activist NGO’s opposing the Voter ID referendum wrote a version of the ballot initiative question it would not look that much different than the one going before voters.
If you look at the testimony against the legislative bill version of the Voter ID question, the majority of the content is about absentee voting and access for the disabled. Voter ID is not their primary objection, they say, it’s everything else. This dovetails perfectly with the way the question is written and how the campaign against Voter ID will be framed. It will not be about Voter ID, but about absentee voting. How convenient.
I won’t go so far as to say that there was collusion between Secretary Bellows and the NGO activist blob, but it certainly shows a parallel partisan mindset. The intent of this question is to reframe the subject matter so that Voter ID is washed out in a sea of objection to partisan interpretations of what’s in the bill.
This is electioneering by the Secretary of State (who, by the way, is running for governor). Plain and simple.
That’s what you get when Shenna Bellows is selected by partisan legislators in Augusta to be Secretary of State. You can pass bipartisan laws to make ballot initiative questions easier to read and understand for Maine voters. There’s no guarantee that a partisan Secretary of State will follow the intent of those laws. They might even draft questions to influence the outcome of a vote.
That’s also where we are in 2025 after almost eight years of total Democrat control of Maine’s systems of government. Those in charge have become used to not being meaningfully challenged.
There is one piece of the law from LD 534 that they can’t skirt around, misinterpret or ignore. A ‘Yes’ vote has to be in favor of the ballot initiative. If you vote ‘Yes’ on the people’s veto, you are voting for it. If you vote ‘Yes’ on Voter ID, you are voting for it.
Remember that when you’re in the voting booth.
If the campaigns for both of these measures are nimble, they will develop simple message campaigns that provide clarity where the ballot language doesn’t. For instance, ‘Vote Yes for Less Spending’ or ‘Vote Yes for Voter ID’. If they do that voters might actually know and understand what they’re voting on and not depend on language crafted through the partisan lens of Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.
