Sec. Bellows Changed Maine Elections, Yet the Question Remains: for Better, or for Worse?

Over her term in office to date, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has changed the way that Maine runs its elections and tracks voter data. Specifically, Maine became a member of the Electronic Registration Information System (ERIC), redesigned the Central Voter Registration (CVR) system and enabled online voter registration.

While these innovations can be seen in the light of modernizing how the Secretary of State’s office administers elections by updating voter registration data and periodically cleaning the state’s voter rolls of duplicates or deceased persons, a surge in “inactive voters” now registered in the system raises questions about the intent of these changes.

Nearly a dozen states have withdrawn from ERIC in recent years, citing concerns about breaches of data privacy and an overall lack of transparency about the system.

What is the ERIC system?

The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a 501(c)3 nonpartisan organization that is billed by their lobbyists as the best system to clean up a state’s voter rolls. It may be listed as nonpartisan with the IRS for 501c3 status, but its roots are firmly planted on the left end of the political spectrum.

ERIC was founded in 2012 by progressive activist David Becker in response the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case. Becker at the time was an election lawyer and activist for the far-left NGO, People for the American Way. ERIC’s progressive roots eventually went mainstream as the organization reached it largest state member base in 2020 and 2022.

At its peak, ERIC boasted 33 states as members. Currently, ERIC retains 24 states and the District of Columbia as members. In 2023 nine states – Alabama, Florida, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Louisiana and Texas – withdrew from the system. The consensus reasoning for withdrawal from the nine states included failure to protect citizen privacy and resistance to transparency from ERIC.

Then Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R-Missouri) went so far as to say, “ERIC’s focus is really on voter registration of individuals who have already had an opportunity to register and made the conscious decision to not be registered.” In other words, its purpose is not just to manage voter data, but to focus for some reason on unregistered voters.

How did Maine join the ERIC system?

Maine joined the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in 2021 at Secretary Bellows’ direction. That decision was never really debated in Augusta, and it was rolled into the biennial budget of the 130th legislature.

The stated intention at the time for including the costs ERIC enrollment in the state budget was that membership would clean up Maine’s voter rolls. Since then, it has become a hot topic for partisan debate in Augusta. It could be argued that the controversy swirling around Maine’s ERIC attachment now is why it did not receive a public hearing as a stand-alone bill in 2021.

In April 2021, Sec. Bellows testified in support of LD 1126 “An Act to Update the Voter Registration Process.” In her testimony, Bellows stated that “Online voter registration utilizes technology to make voter registration easier and more efficient for voters and election administrators alike. Additionally, online voter registration will help us reach more Maine citizens to increase voter participation from more communities, advancing our goals of equity and inclusion.”

Two months later, authorization to shift to online voter registration passed both houses and soon became law. Maine joining ERIC was part of the 130th legislature’s biennial budget that same year. When Governor Janet Mills (D-ME) signed that budget into law on July 1, Maine began the steps of officially joining the ERIC program.

Did ERIC clean up Maine’s voter rolls or swell their numbers?

It appears that as soon as Maine officially joined ERIC in 2021, Maine’s inactive voter rolls increased exponentially. According to data directly from the Maine Secretary of State’s website, after joining ERIC in 2021 Maine’s inactive voter registrations skyrocketed from 3,572 inactive voter registrations in 2020 to 216,035 in 2022.

While in 2024 the number of inactive voter registrations decreased marginally to 185,622, it had still grown by a factor of 52 time. The reason for this might reveal the true nature of ERIC. David Becker, ERIC’s founder, has roots in the progressive movement that benefits from activating otherwise apathetic voters ERIC works to capture information on inactive voters.

ERIC is designed to collect data on what they term eligible-but-unregistered or EBU voters. On its website, ERIC explains and defines this process:

“ERIC provides members with an Eligible but Unregistered Report (EBU Report). This report identifies individuals who may be eligible to vote but who are not yet registered by comparing voter registration data against the motor vehicle database. Individuals who have a driver’s license or ID card, but who do not have a voter registration record are included in the EBU Report.”

EBUs swell the voting rolls of inactive voters who are registered or could be registered. This explains the data from the Maine Secretary of State’s website showing the surge in inactive voters, because the same office also controls the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Does ERIC have a built-in bias?

One of the main concerns about the ERIC system is that readily admits to sharing information with Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR). Both ERIC and CEIR are organizations founded by David Becker. ERIC claims the 501c3 designation of non-partisanship while CEIR can accurately be described as engaging in left wing electioneering.

In 2016 Becker continued to build election infrastructure four years after founding ERIC. During the 2016 presidential race, he co-founded the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). In 2020 CEIR received almost $70 million dollars from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s spouse, Chan Zuckerberg, via her non-profit The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). The millions of CZI dollars that flowed across the country in 2020 were used for CEIR’s efforts to provide voter education, outreach, and voting infrastructure improvements.

These infrastructure improvement efforts are probably best remembered by Chan Zuckerberg being a large part of the money behind the sudden and rapid appearance of ballot drop boxes all over the country. These new ballots drop boxes preferred habitat were in election districts that favored Democrats. The program is why these ballot drop boxes are commonly referred to ‘Zuckerboxes’ and their placement in Democrat leaning districts served to increase voter turnout for one party.

Is the data privacy of Maine citizens, including minors, currently at risk?

On ERIC’s website they describe their process without revealing any internal operations, “At least every 60 days, each member submits their voter registration data and licensing and identification data from motor vehicle departments (MVD) to ERIC. ERIC refers to these data as Member Data. ERIC’s technical staff uses powerful data matching software to compare Member Data from all member states, sometimes with data from other sources, to create the following four “list maintenance” reports.”

This statement above on the ERIC website suggests that the Secretary of State is transmitting Maine citizen’s data from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles every sixty days to the ERIC program. In Maine you can get a driver’s learners permit at 15 and a provisional driver’s license at 16. Having a depository of voter data for 16-year-olds would be very convenient if a bill such as Senator Craig Hickman’s (D-Kennebec) LD 1446 were to pass, amending Maine’s constitution to lower the voting age.

But is this all part of some larger plan? It helps to look a timeline of events.

Maine’s membership in ERIC coincided with the Secretary of State’s office completely changing and revamping the state’s Central Voter Registration system. The roots of this go back to 2018 under then-Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D-ME), at whose behest the state requested in excess of $3 million dollars from the federal government under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) program.

Dunlap did not have a defined plan to use the funds, but his office alluded to improving the cyber security of Maine’s Central Voter Registration system. This period of time coincided with allegations of Russian collusion in the 2016 Presidential election.

Even though Dunlap applied for the HAVA funds, he remained confident that Maine’s elections were secure because they were low tech and did not have online voter registration. This sentiment was referenced in a 2018 Maine Public report.

“Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap has said Maine’s voting system is considered relatively secure because it is low-tech, relying primarily on paper ballots and counting machines that are not connected to the internet. Additionally, those registering to vote cannot do so online, but in person at their local town clerk’s office,” Maine Public reported.

Where did Bellows take it from there?

Dunlap’s successor, Bellows, had a vision for the Secretary of State’s office that would be focused on the Central Voter Registration System using the HAVA funds. The vendor selection process took an interesting path with a dark horse vendor being selected. Stonewall Solutions, a small boutique firm of about 25 people, was selected over the legacy CVR vendor Civix and other firms with larger staffs and business footprints in the space.

The initial contract was for $1.8 million dollars to be paid with federal HAVA funds. Stonewall Solutions was tasked with developing and implementing a new central voter registration system and software for Maine’s elections. Bellows in a press release stated, “We’re excited to be moving forward on a new Central Voter Registration system for Maine with a partner who has a proven track record of providing the backbone of election administration: a secure, statewide voter list with features that will ease election administration for Maine’s hard-working local election clerks, and for voters themselves.”

Only that’s not what happened on the front end of the CVR program for municipal election clerks. That remains the same antiquated interface as it was before the redesign. In fact, the Secretary of State’s Office controls all of the data for people who register to vote online. Online registrations go straight into the Secretary of State’s Office CVR system and clerks receive a notification through their CVR messenger to update them.

Town Clerks have many duties and do not sit on their CVR interface all day. This makes it easy for them to miss or receive late notification of online voter registrations. Online voting registration going directly into the Secretary of State’s CVR back end only streamlines that information being shared with the ERIC system and potentially their sister organization CEIR who may share it with campaigns, though there is currently too little oversight or transparency to know for sure.

How would Rep. Barbara Bagshaw’s LD 1431 have fixed this?

A Republican bill to increase electoral transparency was recently voted down in committee, but it offered solutions to some of the concerns swirling around ERIC.

Rep. Barbara Bagshaw’s (R-Windham) LD 1431, “An Act to Implement an Interstate Voter Registration Cross-check Program” was a brief proposal that included seven points to increase privacy and cross referencing with other states to maximize accurate voter rolls. It would have allowed candidate for Governor and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to continue be a member of ERIC) if she chooses to, but have required her office to expand its metrics using other states data to cross reference in hopes to obtain the cleanest voting rolls possible.

Rep. Bagshaw’s bill would have enabled the Office of Secretary of State to open up voter roll verification with other states, even beyond those that subscribe to ERIC. Working with other states could have allowed for cross-referencing driver’s license numbers of people who move from one state to another. This is verifiable documentation of a person setting up residency in a state other than Maine.

Currently, ERIC only receives this type of driver’s license data from less than half of the country’s states. It’s an incomplete data set. Maine being able to share data with a broader pool including every state in the union would have been an effective tool to clean up Maine’s voter rolls, and still could were a measure like LD 1431 were to pass.

The inter-state model would also take voter data and privacy a step further than it is now if Maine were to leave the ERIC program. Also, having no third-party vendor involved with other vendors would greatly reduce the risk of a cyber-hack of Maine citizens’ personal data.

ERIC has not shown a willingness to disclose their vendors, agents or subcontractors and this has been a catalyst for states leaving the program in recent years. States cited their concerns over transparency and the privacy protections of their citizens if they continued to transmit data to ERIC. It is still unclear who ERIC’s main data vendor is or where they are based.

Maine has a completely new landscape for voting, but is it better?

The addition of online voter registration, a new Central Voter Registration system and continued Electronic Registration Information Center membership have changed the way that Maine’s election operations work. Under Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, Maine’s number of eligible-but-not registered voter rolls have exponentially exploded exponentially, but how does that ensure ballot integrity?

Bellows’ office testified in opposition to Bagshaw’s bill, only reinforcing the current secretary of state’s insistence of continuing the monopoly of only working with ERIC for voter roll maintenance, and spurning calls for broader transparency.