The effort to bring Voter ID to Maine began with a record-breaking collection of more than 170,000 signatures but ended Tuesday night with an embarrassingly fizzle as less than 40 percent of Mainers voted “Yes on One” to approve the election integrity measure.
According to Decision Desk HQ, the vote stood at 215,641 against (62 percent) versus 132,053 in favor (38 percent) as of midnight. That means tens of thousands of Maine voters signed the petition to get Voter ID on the ballot but either failed to turn out on Election Day or wound up opposing the measure at the polls.
The failure comes after the Ballot Question Committee (BQC) gathered petition signatures for a bulky piece of legislation that went far beyond a simple voter ID requirement to include some minor changes to absentee voting processes. However, those small changes were enough to allow Democratic opponents of voter ID to turn the entire campaign into a referendum on absentee voting rather than on election integrity.
In part because of strategic blunder of tacking absentee ballot language onto what could have been a clean Voter ID initiative, the Yes on One BQC drastically underspent its opponents and struggled to raise money.
Multiple attempts to pass Voter ID via the legislature failed in recent years due to Democratic opposition.
In response, the Voter ID for ME BQC, led by Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and Alex Titcomb, executive director of the Dinner Table, gathered the signatures required to put the voter ID referendum on the ballot.
Polls have consistently shown that universal voter ID requirements have broad, bipartisan support among American adults, including Maine voters.
Nevertheless, more than 60 percent of Mainers voted to reject Voter ID for ME’s question after opponents of the election integrity measure vastly outspent Voter ID for ME.
According to data reported on the Maine Ethics Commission website on Election Day, Voter ID for ME spent just $248,801 supporting their ballot question, while opposing groups, such as Save Absentee Voting, spent $1,127,052.
That reported amount likely undervalues the full amount left-wing groups spent protecting no-ID voting, as the Maine Democratic Party and a coalition of left-wing 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) groups dedicated significant time, staff, and resources to opposing the measure.
[RELATED: Breaking Down the Disproportionate Amounts Raised and Spent on Question 1 So Far This Year…]
Notably, another filing on the Ethics Commission website lists Voter ID for ME’s total annual spending as $566,230, though that number appears to include items like loan repayments that are not direct campaigning and is still dramatically lower than spending in support of the question.
While expending far more financial resources, advocates for No-ID voting also had prominent political figures coming out against Question 1, including Gov. Janet Mills (D) and Democratic Rep. Jared Golden (ME-CD2), who has historically portrayed himself as a moderate.
[RELATED: Jared Golden Joins the Ranks of Democrat Politicians Urging Mainers to Reject Question 1…]
While the Yes on One BQC’s lack of fundraising and the opponents’ drastic overspending surely contributed to the question’s failure, Voter ID for ME’s own choices likely also contributed significantly to their failure.
Instead of making the ballot question focus exclusively on the widely supported voter ID requirements, the BQC directors also decided to include narrow — but far more controversial — changes to Maine’s absentee voting. These changes also added a degree of complexity to the proposed law that allowed critics to frame the Question One language in a biased manner and center the debate on absentee voting rather than Voter ID.
One Maine Democratic activist, whose party-funded phone banking was captured in a recording, even went so far as to falsely tell a would-be independent voter that Question One would eliminate absentee voting altogether while also disenfranchising Native Americans.
[RELATED: Breaking Down How Question 1 Would Change Election Law in Maine…]
The BQC decided to include a variety of procedural changes to absentee voting, including preventing voters from requesting ballots over the phone, ending the ongoing/automatic absentee program, and requiring voters to request a ballot for every election instead of allowing the state to send one automatically.
The question would also limit the number of ballot drop boxes in a municipality to just one, set a deadline for absentee ballot requests, prevent immediate family members from requesting absentee ballots on behalf of relatives, and prohibit pre-paid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes.
The decision to include those changes allowed opponents of the election integrity measures to successfully pivot the discourse on the referendum away from the popular voter ID aspect and onto the far more contentious restrictions on absentee voting.
The most successful organization opposing the ballot question, which spent $756,015 campaigning against the election changes, is called Save Maine Absentee Voting, and it framed the Voter ID aspect as merely a “Trojan Horse” to push through the absentee voting changes.
Both Gov. Mills and Rep. Golden focused on the absentee changes rather than voter ID in their statements against the referendum, with Golden referring to Voter ID for ME’s question as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The successful shift in focus on discussions of the questions pushed proponents into a defensive position, forcing them to defend the proposed absentee changes. The BQC was so unable to launch an effective counter to the opponents narrative that even some supporters of the Voter ID question came to believe that it would effectively end absentee voting altogether.
Shortly before election day, Maine Sen. Brad Farrin (R-Somerset) criticized Titcomb for the BQC’s decision to include absentee voting in the referendum rather than focusing on voter ID.
“If they had just left it for voter ID, I think it probably would have been a slam dunk,” said Farrin. “Both sides want to win at all costs, and so it’s an all-in battle on every topic instead of trying to find some compromise.”
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows used the BQC’s decision to place the absentee changes front and center in the official wording of the ballot question, making the voter ID component appear like an afterthought.
The question reads:
“Do you want to change Maine election laws to eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, end ongoing absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, ban prepaid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes, limit the number of drop boxes, require voters to show certain photo ID before voting, and make other changes to our elections?”
During the 30-day public comment period, which allowed Mainers to submit feedback on the proposed phrasing, the Yes on One BQC did not submit any comments on Bellows’ text, nor did the organization encourage their supporters to do so. That move signaled to many political insiders that the organizers had effectively surrendered.
Titcomb, on behalf of the BQC, brought a lawsuit against the Secretary of State, alleging that the question misrepresented the referendum.
The Cumberland County Superior Court ruled in favor of Bellows’ phrasing, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court upheld that ruling during an appeal, arguing that the text of the question would not mislead a reasonable voter into casting their ballot against their will.
With the failure of the Voter ID proposal in Maine, Maine voters—including the non-citizens whom Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has admitted are registered to vote in Maine—will not be required to show ID for Maine’s pivotal 2026 elections, which include an open race for governor, a hotly contested ME-CD2 race, U.S. Senator Susan Collins’ re-election fight, and races for every state legislative district in Maine.
Meanwhile, voters in Texas approved on Tuesday a change to their state’s constitution that effectively bars non-citizens from voting.
