S6E2 Behind the Ballot: Voting Integrity in Maine with Shenna Bellows

In this episode, we interview Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on election processes, election security, the importance of local municipal elections, and semi-open primaries. This episode explores the extensive systems Maine employs to protect the democratic process. Secretary Bellows provides an in-depth look at how the state ensures every vote is counted accurately, discussing the critical roles played by officials, volunteers, and election workers at both local and state levels. These dedicated teams work together to implement a secure, transparent election process that fosters trust in the system. Maine is notably #1 in the nation in voter turnout rate due to our state’s policy of same-day voter registration, underscoring the importance of removing obstacles for people to get to the polls. The conversation highlights how rigorous planning, careful oversight, and collaborative efforts are essential to maintaining voter confidence and protecting the integrity of each election in Maine.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Shenna Bellows: I love that you said that. And I always say to people that have a lot of questions or doubts about the elections, volunteer as a poll worker. Because it’s a great way, just as you did in Bangor, and you get that training, and then you see the process firsthand to see how carefully and well crafted our election laws are and how safe our elections really are.

[00:00:26] Eric Miller: That was our guest, Maine Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, on today’s episode discussing voting integrity in Maine.

Hello and welcome back to Maine Policy Matters, the official podcast of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine, where we discuss the policy matters that are most important to Maine’s people and why Maine policy matters at the local, state, and national levels. My name is Eric Miller, and I’ll be your host. Today, we’ll be interviewing Maine Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, on election processes, election security, the importance of local municipal elections, and semi-open primaries.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is Maine’s 50th Secretary of State and the first female Secretary of State. She serves on the Executive Board of the National Association of Secretaries of State as the Eastern Region Vice President. She chairs the National Executive Committee of the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

She also serves on the Elections Assistance Commission. She previously represented part of Kennebec County as a state senator. Prior to public service, she was Executive Director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine on the UMA campus, where she now serves on the UMA Board of Visitors.

She resides in Manchester. Maine has a strong reputation for its election integrity measures and voter participation rate. The Maine Secretary of State’s office oversees elections and voting in Maine, with the Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions supervising and administering all elections of federal, state and county offices and referenda.

The Bureau has many duties, including advise election officials from 500 municipalities, 600 candidates, and the general public regarding election laws and procedures. They prepare, proofread, and distribute 1800 separate ballot types and other elections materials. They tabulate official election results, they supervise recounts and contested races, and they oversee the application of state laws pertaining to candidate and citizen initiative petitions.

Today you will hear my interview with Secretary Bellows on exactly how the state has been ensuring election security, as well as advocating for voting rights and accessibility for its citizens and why Maine has been ranked number one in voter participation in the nation. We had an enjoyable conversation covering technical elements of how elections are carried out to what factor Secretary Bellows believes contribute to Maine’s active political culture. And now, on to our interview.

Secretary Bellows, thank you for joining us today.

[00:03:26] Shenna Bellows: My pleasure, thank you for having me.

[00:03:29] Eric Miller: Can you explain your role as Secretary of State from facilitating candidates getting on the Maine ballot to carrying out and certifying the election?

[00:03:38] Shenna Bellows: So as Maine’s Secretary of State, I am the Chief Elections Official for the state. Now we have an amazing Civil Service Elections Division. In fact, Maine’s Elections Director, Deputy Secretary Julie Flynn has been doing this longer than anyone else in the country.

She’s been the Elections Director for 30 years. So they do the day-to-day operations, right? She oversees design of all the ballots for the whole state, production and distribution of those ballots, training the clerks because of course, in Maine our elections are run at the municipal level with our town and city clerks.

And she handles that data, testing the tabulators. I could go into lots of detail about each aspect of the administration of the elections that the civil service staff and partnering with our clerks are doing. My role as the Secretary of State is to oversee the election.

I do a tremendous amount of public education. I’m really focused on election security and building partnerships with state and federal law enforcement to protect our clerks. And I also do have to oversee certification of the candidates who are on the ballot and then certification of the election itself.

[00:04:54] Eric Miller: Okay, great. That’s quite the administrative effort to design the ballots and get all the right papers and the right amount of ballots printed out and ready to go in the right places. So mentioning the design of the ballot and it’s something you oversee and not necessarily have a hand in the day-to-day operations and creation of that. But what’s the thought process behind designing a ballot? And how has your office gone about that since the implementation of ranked-choice voting?

[00:05:26] Shenna Bellows: So our focus is clarity and predictability. So we want the ballots to look the same year after year, and we want the ballots to look the same wherever you are in the state. And so for a long time in Maine, under the law, the state elections division, which is civil service, has designed the ballots.

And there are some protocols. So candidates are in alphabetical order by last name, that’s uniform. There are protocols for selection of the order of the questions. In fact, I do it randomly. We pull it out of a hat, live on TV and Facebook for everybody to see. And there are some rules in state law.

So for example, citizen initiated questions are always first. And then bond questions and then legislatively initiated questions. So there are five referendum questions. The one that was initiated by the citizens is number one. There are three bond questions. And then the fifth question is the question of the state flag that was initiated by the legislature.

So voters will see ballots that look very similar to 2020, just with different names and different questions. And that is the goal. We want voters to feel that the ballot is very familiar, very predictable, and that increases the ease of use.

So no hanging chads in Maine.

[00:06:50] Eric Miller: Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Note that this is not a time for throwbacks. One that won’t age well or hasn’t aged well.

[00:06:57] Shenna Bellows: But I think we do it really well in Maine because in some places around the country, and this is where you see some of these challenges sometimes, elections are run at the county level in most states, except for New England, and in those places, the counties are actually creating ballots. You might see in different counties in the state of Florida, different ballot designs. Whereas in Maine, we have conscientiously under the law, this is a decision of the legislature, for many, many years, those ballots have been designed at the state level, and then printed in bulk, and then sent out to all of the cities and towns, so that you have that uniformity all across the state.

And we’re testing the ballots. We are reviewing the ballots, both in the state and the local level, so proofing them in teams of two. And then we’re also testing them. We test the machines that read the ballots, and we test different iterations of the ballots, and we do that testing at the state level and the local level. It’s called logic and accuracy testing to make sure those ballots can be read. So there are many checks and balances on the ballot.

[00:08:06] Eric Miller: Perhaps this might bias, but that makes a lot of sense to me, more so than the county administrative only, because I could see some confusion coming when different counties do different things, and then when there are some disputes or challenges that when it gets kicked up to the state level, then the secretary has to keep track of all of the different methods that each county employed. 

And so as it’s a great effort to carry out an election, it requires a lot of people. What function do nonpartisan election staff and observers serve in the processes of voting and subsequent handling of the ballots? And how does this process work for maintaining integrity of mail-in ballots specifically?

[00:08:48] Shenna Bellows: I was on a panel with our Bangor clerk, Lisa, and we were talking through how many thousands of people we think are involved in the elections process. And we had a hard time coming up with a good number. We know it’s over 2,000. We wondered aloud if it was over 5,000, because you think about it, Maine has roughly 500 towns across the state, and you have clerks in every election, you have wardens, you have the ballot clerks, you have the registrars who are in charge of voter registration. And of course, in some of your smallest towns, your clerks are wearing many hats, but no aspect of the election is happening with just one person alone. It’s designed where there are these checks and balances.

And so on election day itself, under Maine law, the towns have to recruit in equal numbers from the major political parties, Democrat and Republican, volunteers to serve in overseeing the election. So when you go to vote and you state your name and address to the two people behind the table, it’s two people, at least two, sometimes more, by design. And by design, one of them is likely a Republican and one of them is likely a Democrat.

So that’s so that there can be confidence from all sides that the administration of the election itself is free and fair. Now, in addition to that, we do have, of course, the right for election observation. Our elections are super transparent, radically transparent, I would argue, because people can observe many steps of the process.

They can observe the logic and accuracy testing. When absentee ballots are being, when those envelopes are being opened, actually the clerks are putting out notices so that members of the public and representatives from the political parties and campaigns can go in person and watch. They can look at the envelopes.

They can look at the absentee applications. They can verify that it’s all legit and watch those envelopes be opened and those absentee ballots be either placed in a ballot box or placed into the tabulators that read the ballots. And then on election day, observers are permitted to be in the polling places, both non-partisan observers like the League of Women Voters or academics, and party observers from any of the five political parties in Maine.

They can be there present with eyes on the election. Now, they can’t campaign in the polling place. They can’t be wearing their t-shirts for their favorite candidates or interfering with the voters, but they can watch that process.

And then when the count happens, so of course in Maine we count the ballots right when the polls close at 8 p.m. in all of our cities and towns. And when we count the ballots, any member of the public can watch the count. And so candidates will often send observers themselves into those towns. Members of the press will. When I was a state senate candidate, I was a state senator for Southern Kennebec County. I would always have volunteers go and watch the count when the polls closed in the 11 towns that I represented.

So they could text me back the results as soon as it happened, and I would know right away what those results were. So there are lots of ways that people can watch the process. And I think that’s part of why we see in Maine such high levels of voter confidence.

[00:12:17] Are there non-in-person methods of viewing some of these open-to-public activities, such as a live stream or anything?

[00:12:26] Shenna Bellows: So at the state level, we have implemented that when we do recounts or we do a ranked-choice voting tabulation. For example, in Congressional District 2 in 2022, I live-streamed the whole thing so that people could see that happening and we broadcast that on Facebook. Of course, members of the press can come and do live video or audio or reporting from the site.

There are some rules around not interfering with voter privacy, right? Because your private ballot, that is sacred. And so there’s no videotaping within a certain distance of voters on election day. There’s no surveillance in that way. And I don’t think most towns have implemented live streaming of the count. But at the state level, we have done some of that work.

[00:13:20] Eric Miller: The amount of transparency that Maine strives for with their elections, still there is some misinformation out there, some voting and other election type of theories about how honest everything is. So, what important part of the election process that you believe could be better communicated to the public? And what is the misunderstood element of the election process that you’d like to clarify?

[00:13:48] Shenna Bellows: So, we have a lot of checks and balances in our elections. And we have checks and balances in Maine. And I know from my work with Democratic and Republican Secretaries of State across the country, that many of these same checks and balances that we have in our state exist in every state.

So, I’ll talk about what some of those are. Paper ballots. Paper ballots are the gold standard in election security. And over 95% of the country is voting, utilizing paper ballots at this point. There was a short time in the early 2000s where some areas of the country were moving to touch screen voting. And there were concerns about hacking or manipulation of those results.

So, at this point, virtually everywhere, we’re using paper ballots. And in Maine, we use paper ballots. Even if you at the polls decide you prefer the touch screen machine, which is called the ExpressVote, it’s designed specifically for people with disabilities. People with sight impaired can use Braille to utilize the machine, or they can use headphones to hear the ballot read to them, or people that have difficulty filling out a ballot can use that. Actually, anybody can use that machine. But it’s generating a paper ballot with a record of your vote so that it can be viewed, it can be checked, it can be recounted, and that paper ballot is really foundational to our election security.

The other thing I wish everyone knew is that across the country, the tabulators, which are the machines that are utilized to count the ballots, they’re like a modern day abacus. So it’s literally a counting machine. It is not connected to the Internet. The only cord you will see is the power cord that powers these machines. It is a hardened machine. That means it can’t be hacked by cybercriminals or by Russia or China or Iran.

They literally are counting the votes. As I previously mentioned, they’re being tested. The memory devices are special USB drives. They’re not, you can’t just go into staples and get a USB drive and put it in the machine and get the results or change the results. So the memory devices that we use, those are tested at the state level. They’re programmed to read the ballot that is specific to that municipality for that election.

And then they’re tested at the local level to make sure they’re working correctly. And they’re tested with test ballots that have different iterations of different potential winners. So I wish people understood that those tabulators are very secure and cannot be hacked.

[00:16:27] Eric Miller: I worked the election in 2020 in Bangor, and I, in our orientation for the workers, I didn’t know those things. And the official that was giving the orientation described all these processes of security to us. And I was like, I wish I knew all this stuff before, because it inspired a lot of confidence in what we were doing and how secure everything was at the time from when the ballots, the tamper-proof boxes that they’re in, and the way that things are handed off to one another was really impressive to me. And I was proud of Maine for how they organized the election and how it was carried out.

And you mentioned the voter confidence in Maine. Maine had the highest voter participation rate in the nation for the 2022 midterm election. What about Maine’s political culture do you think yielded this turnout? And what role do state and local governments play in getting so many Mainers out to vote?

[00:17:25] Shenna Bellows: So I really attribute our extraordinary turnout to three things. First, I think same-day voter registration is a huge generative factor in voter participation. So we just had National Voter Registration Day a couple of weeks ago.

And the reason there’s a National Voter Registration Day is that in many states, the deadline to register to vote to participate in the November election is in September. And in Maine and the other state that is consistently at the top of the nation in voter participation, our top rivals, Minnesota, we both have same-day voter registration. In Maine, we’ve had that since 1973.

And so when there’s no deadline to register to vote, you can wake up on election day, realize it’s election day, you want to vote, get your ID and a proof of residency that you live in Maine, you know, a bill or something, perhaps your cell phone bill, and go to the polls and you can register to vote and cast your ballot on the same day. So we’ve lowered the barrier for participation significantly. I think that is actually the number one reason.

And I get interviewed sometimes by national groups who are really interested in rank choice voting. And I personally love rank choice voting. I think it’s a huge and innovative reform.

But sometimes they’ll say, do you think rank choice voting is why Maine is doing so well? And I say, I think rank choice voting is fabulous. But if you look at the history, Maine has consistently been number one or number two for years and that same-day voter registration.

There’s a second reason though, that I think we have high levels of voter participation. Voters are more likely to participate if they think that it matters. And in many states around the country, gerrymandering has really undermined our democracy.

What is gerrymandering? It is when politicians pick their voters rather than voters picking the politicians. What do I mean by that? I mean that they’re drawing the maps for the legislative districts, for the state legislature, and for Congress in such a way that benefits their political parties. So you see these weird districts that have no basis in any sort of common sense, and they’re drawn to concentrate either the Republican voters or the Democratic voters in a particular place and win elections for those politicians. In Maine, we have an awesome redistricting process.

We don’t have gerrymandering. Why? Because our redistricting process under the Constitution, no matter who is in power when redistricting happens every 10 years, it’s equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats by law on that commission with one independent chair who oversees the whole process.

Then when it goes to the legislature, you have to have an overwhelming majority support those redistricting maps. So it can’t just be the party in power that approves it. It needs to be two-thirds, and if it doesn’t, it goes to the courts.

And so that redistricting process, it means that no one party controls the districts. So what happens? Our districts in Maine are super competitive, very purple in a lot of places in the state. And so voters recognize that their vote is really going to make a difference. And we’ve seen some races come down to just a couple of votes. So those I think are the top two policy reasons.

Of course, I’m from Maine, so I’m just going to say the third reason is because Mainers are the best. We’re absolutely the best. I have, so Senator Angus King tells a story that I love about a standing bet he had when he was governor with Jesse Ventura, who was the governor of Minnesota, about who would be number one, Maine or Minnesota.

So now the Secretary of State from Minnesota, Steve Simon and I have a bet for 2024. If they beat us, I have to send Steve some lobster. But I’m hoping that we are going to win. And I know Minnesota doesn’t have lobster, but maybe some cheese or something. You heard it here first. Maine needs to be number one in the nation again in 2024.

[00:21:43] Eric Miller: So the purple-ness that you mentioned and the stake in what you’re voting in matters a lot. Maine has the unique element of having to be able to split its electoral votes. And Nebraska was just in the news recently from their state legislature, contemplating bringing a special session to vote on their similar splitting of electoral votes to consolidate to winner take all.

Would you say that the history in Maine, that was the rationale for splitting the vote, is to make the one vote in Northern Maine feel a little more competitive or more, like the residents up there had some more stake in which way the electoral vote could be cast.

[00:22:28] Shenna Bellows: I think that’s a fascinating question that would make a very good article in the next policy journal, so call out to researchers out there and historians to research that question. And please reach out to Maine State Archives, which I also oversee as Secretary of State. We have a lot of original source documents from the legislature and historical materials that might be helpful in this question or any other Maine history question that people have.

What I think is interesting about our Electoral College is again, it does definitely contribute to the excitement around the presidential race, right? Because we report out our presidential results by congressional district. So under Maine law, congressional district one gets one electoral vote, congressional district two gets one electoral vote. So one each reach congressional district. And then two electoral, I say congressional vote, I meant electoral votes. And then two electoral votes at the statewide level. So that’s four. So in 2020, Joe Biden received one electoral vote from CD1, Donald Trump received one electoral vote from CD2, and Biden received two statewide. And that’s because we reported out those three different totals.

So who won in each congressional district, and then who won the largest number of votes at the state level. This will be really interesting in 2024. So people might forget that in 2020, we had a rank choice voting ballot for the presidential race.

So people had that opportunity to rank their presidential choices in 2020. That being said, on election night, when the reports, the results were reported by the wardens in the polling places, and then the next two days as the local clerks were certifying the election, it was quickly very clear that Biden had received 50% plus one, well beyond that in CD1 and statewide, and Donald Trump had received more than 50% in CD2. So there was no rank choice voting tabulation.

So as a reminder for anybody who is new to rank choice voting, or maybe just moved to the state, that rank choice voting tabulation comes into play if a candidate doesn’t receive 50% of the vote plus one on election night. And so in 2024, we’ll be looking at those totals very carefully and seeing whether anyone falls below. With five presidential candidates on the ballot, it is possible that you might see candidates in the 40th percentile or 30s or lower and not hit that 50% threshold.

And you could see potentially a rank choice voting tabulation for the presidential. And that again, would happen in accordance to the electoral votes. So it could be just in CD1 or just in CD2 or just statewide.

And that will be really interesting to see.

[00:25:38] Eric Miller: Yeah, that’s a really important reminder and note about rank choice voting. It’s a creative tool to approach as a counter to first past the post, but something that is not as a couple layers to it, more so than other approaches that maybe people are used to. And I think that what we’ve highlighted here, I find to be interesting is I think it’s yielded in a better representation or more interesting and nuanced type of political lane that people take, whether Senator Collins or Congressman Golden, maybe to the chagrin of their respective party, like voting whips in Congress, often are noted as having a more independent voice, and Maine tends to have more independent candidates. And I think that some of these voting and types of measures of how elections are organized might reflect the nuanced political opinion of people across the entire nation. I think that Maine just highlights it in a really interesting way. 

And so, while there may be more confidence in Maine than other places, American politics is rife with cynicism and mistrust regardless of political affiliation. In the face of this, what is particularly concerning to you and what makes you hopeful?

[00:26:53] Shenna Bellows: What is most concerning to me is that disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation continue to be pervasive in our civic discourse, particularly online, but not just online. And I want to talk about each of those for a minute. They’re all pernicious.

So disinformation is the worst, right? That is outright lies intended to manipulate public opinion. And it’s followed closely by malinformation, which is what Stephen Colbert called truthiness.

Malinformation is a kernel of a fact, twisted to tell a lie. And then misinformation is people just having the wrong information. You know, you’re wrong, but you’re mistaken. It’s well-intentioned. And I worry a little bit less about that because that is easily fixed by getting out the facts. But I want to give you a couple of examples of disinformation and malinformation and just talk a little bit about that.

So disinformation is spread not just by political operatives seeking to undermine their opponents, but we also unfortunately, and part of being Secretary of State, part of being the chief elections officials is ensuring, and ensuring election security is getting briefed by our federal partners with information about what our foreign adversaries are trying to do to disrupt American democracy and undermine our national unity and democracy itself. And so oftentimes you will see lies about elections placed online. In fact, the federal government just issued some indictments around individuals and entities that were actively peddling lies about the election with an intent to disrupt the 2024 election by agents of Russia.

And so people spread these things. You know, they share a post on Facebook or X–formerly known as Twitter, unwittingly realizing that the source of the information is a malign influence from a foreign adversary who’s seeking to influence our elections illegally. And that just breaks my heart.

And so I want to talk about, you know, one of their bunch of different lies floating around about elections that good people mistakenly believe. And then the reason it breaks my heart is if those folks then don’t vote because they believe a lie about an election, they’re giving up their power to influence our democracy and have their voice heard. And so absentee voting, perfect example.

We have always had really strong absentee voting laws. Why is that? Because we want every eligible United States citizen who’s living in Maine to be able to vote. No exceptions. Maine is one of two states in the country where every citizen has the right to vote. So we see these attacks on absentee voting.

We hear, you know, oh, you know, the absentee, you know, someone could photocopy the ballots and just stuff an absentee ballot drop box with them or the clerk could take those ballots and countervote differently in a back room somewhere. Well, that’s garbage. It’s just not true.

So with the absentee ballots, for example, when you can request an absentee ballot, you can request it in our online absentee ballot request system. You can call your local clerk or you can go in person. And actually, ballots are becoming available now and starting October 7th, everywhere in the state of Maine 30 days prior to Election Day, ballots must be available to voters everywhere in our state.

So get your ballot soon. But that being said, the clerks get those requests. They have to check the request against the voter registration list to make sure that it’s a verified voter. So some anonymous hack from another state or someone who’s not a citizen can’t call up and ask that a ballot be sent to them because it has to match a registered voter who has had to show proof of identity and proof of residency and affirm their citizenship at the point of registration. That request matches the voter registration. The clerk has to ensure that there’s a proper absentee ballot application, that either the voter has filled out or if it’s a telephone query that the clerk is filling out, so that there is proof of that application or the absentee ballot that’s been requested.

Then when the clerk sends out the ballot, they also send out a specific absentee ballot return envelope, which is a security envelope, which has data about the voter on the envelope. In the bigger municipalities, it’s often a barcode, but not all of those. The voter, when they fill out that ballot and they place it in the envelope, it has to be in that envelope.

They can’t return a ballot in a different, they can’t put it in a vanilla envelope because they spilled coffee on the special envelope. Call and get, spoil your ballot, destroy it or return it to the clerk and she’ll mark it as spoiled, get a new one. But it has to be in that special envelope, and you have to seal it and sign it.

So that when it goes back, the clerk is tracking that envelope back to that application and putting them together, literally attaching the two. Those don’t get opened, those ballots don’t get opened until the clerk has given notice to the parties, for the observers to come and watch. It’s a public process where the absentee ballots get enveloped, and the parties can look at those envelopes.

They can check those names and that information against the voter registration list to see if there’s anyone who they think is not eligible. They can check those applications to make sure there is a valid application and do that check and balance before those absentee ballots get processed. 

There’s another check on the system. The clerk is entering all of this in to our central voter registration system, and we have an online absentee ballot tracking system that the voter can use to make sure, oh, they received my request. My request has been accepted. My ballot has made it back. My ballot has been accepted. But we also take the bulk data. We eliminate the names, but we have voter ID information in the bulk data, and we publicize it on our website twice a week.

The parties take that, and they have purchased the voter files, so they have the names of the voters, and they can match what we publish against the voter file. They can see exactly who has requested a ballot, and who has returned a ballot. So they have all of that information. We’re actually posting that, again, on our website, and those parties can check who is requesting a ballot, and who’s returning it. So you can’t stuff a ballot box, because you’d have to be a registered voter to even get a ballot. But say you created some fake ballots and just put them in the ballot box.

Well, they’d have to be in that special security envelope. Say you found a way to manufacture fake security envelopes. Well, when the clerk got those envelopes with those ballots, the clerk could have to check and make sure there was an application on file at the clerk’s office.

Say you had snuck into the clerk’s office and you put a bunch of applications in a file folder that were fraudulent to match the fraudulent ballots that you had somehow manufactured with the fraudulent envelopes that you had somehow manufactured and placed in the drop box. Well, when the parties and the clerks go to look at processed absentee ballots, they’d be checking it against the verified voter list. You’d catch them in.

But again, that sounds absurd. Is it realistic that fraudsters are going to be able to manufacture the envelopes and break into the clerk’s office, into the secure locked secret place that the clerk has those applications? Probably not.

All of those checks and balances that I’ve described are why we’re trying to make it as easy and accessible to vote but as hard to achieve as possible. But the lies keep people from voting. And absentee voting can be a great option for seniors, people with disabilities, people commuting long ways to work or just when life happens and gets complicated.

[00:35:47] Eric Miller: Yeah. I do have a follow-up question to absentee voting. So a US citizen Maine resident decides to vote via absentee. How do the people, the two, you likely Democrat, one likely Republican, election worker who checks people in, how do they know who has voted absentee? Say someone forgot or had malicious intent.

[00:36:09] Shenna Bellows: Yeah. So we track it on the Central Voter Registration System. It is carefully tracked in the system, and the clerk is producing what’s called the incoming voter list on election day, and that tracks everyone who’s already voted. So when you go into the polling place, those are actually printed lists. You’ll see them in front of those clerks and they’re checking the name off of a list. That list has already screened out everyone who’s already voted. So the clerk can be like, oh no, you already voted.

Now, what if there was a mistake? And this sometimes happens with father sons that have the same name or very common names. I always feel sympathy for the John and William Smiths of the world, where somebody might come into a town and say, well, I didn’t vote.

And the Bangor clerk was telling me that this did happen once, where somebody came in and they had the same name as someone who had voted and he swore up and down he hadn’t voted. And so we have a process for that. So that person was able to vote.

They were able to vote a challenged ballot. So the challenged ballots get a secret mark on them. And they go in and they’re automatically counted.So that guy didn’t lose his right to vote that day, right? His ballot was counted. But the mark allows the clerk to go back and check for  two reasons.

If the number of challenged ballots would influence the outcome of the election, then the process is to go back and look at everything, right? And look at all of those challenged ballots. And attorneys from the political parties come into that process and they’re arguing with each other. And lawyers are involved on all sides looking at those challenged ballots. But it also allows the clerk to track down the truth. So for example, in that particular situation, the clerk reached out and found yes, in fact, that other voter had voted absentee.

He didn’t try to come in on election day because he’d already voted and confirmed that. They looked at the application and they were like, oh, okay, so someone just mistyped in the system that, and I can’t remember the gentleman’s name. I wouldn’t say it anyway because that would be a violation of voter privacy. But yeah, they had accidentally checked the wrong guy with the same name off in the system, but the application was for the right guy. And so the two individuals with the same name, both were able to vote and the clerk was able to check that neither of them double voted. Now, there are checks and balances in the system.

So if someone tries to vote in two different towns on election day or prior to election day and then on election day, they will be caught and they will be prosecuted. And this did happen with two individuals in 2020 who voted twice. One of them had malicious intent, one of them said it was an accident.

They thought they were allowed to vote both where they attended school and where they were from. Guess what? Both of them got charged with a felony because that’s the way our system works. If you vote twice, it is a felony and you will be charged.

[00:39:08] Eric Miller: So, we’ve covered a lot of the concerns. It seems like, and I’d love to hear what you have to say about what gives you hope as well. But the way that the administrative structure and the layers of checks and balances that you’ve been mentioning over the course of our conversation gives me hope at least.

And so, I would like to hear about what your thoughts are about what gives you hope.

[00:39:33] Shenna Bellows: I love that you said that. And I always say to people that have a lot of questions or doubts about the elections, volunteer as a poll worker. Because it’s a great way, just as you did in Bangor, and you get that training and then you see the process firsthand to see how carefully and well crafted our election laws are and how safe our elections really are.

So that certainly gives me hope. The second thing that gives me hope is, other than three things, the second thing that gives me hope is just the commitment and dedication of election officials all across the state. Our city and town clerks are amazing, really truly hardworking, wonderful individuals.

My elections division, my civil service staff led by Deputy Flynn, they’ve been working weekends and nights to prepare for the election already. They’re phenomenal. So the people who are involved in election administration give me hope.

And I always say to folks, bring your best selves to the polls, give that clerk a smile or bring some cookies or a pie, welcome them and thank them for the work that they do when you go to vote. And then the third thing that gives me hope is voter participation. Because I will tell you Maine citizens are fired up.

We are already seeing some phenomenal voter registration with both new voters and people updating their voter registrations online. So for example, this year already, we’ve seen over 20,000 new voters. We’re seeing huge uptick in our online voter registration.

In the first couple of weeks of September, we saw over 5,000 registrants each week. And that was both new registrants and people updating their voter registration if they’ve moved. So that online voter registration portal at maine.gov slash vote, that’s new this year in 2024.

And Maine citizens are definitely utilizing it. So I just love to see that enthusiasm, right? Because I’m a geek about democracy. And democracy is fundamental to everything that we care about. That right to vote, it’s foundational to every other issue that matters.

[00:41:46] Eric Miller: I would say that for being a geek about democracy, you’ve reached your dream job of being Secretary of State. So we’ve talked a lot about the past and upcoming election. Looking further beyond, what do you see as the future of voting rights and integrity of elections in Maine?

And is there anything else you’d like to mention as we close out our conversation? And if there’s any specific links or information that you’d like to share with folks, if they would like to get involved in their local elections, we’d love to post it in our description.

[00:42:13] Shenna Bellows: So you mentioned my dream job. Can I just tell you, when I was a kid, I had a poster of the Bill of Rights on my bedroom wall. And now on my office wall here, I have a reproduction of Maine’s 1820 Constitution. And Secretary of State, fun fact, I’m the guardian of the state seal “and the original Constitution. And so I walk into my office every day and I take a look at that Constitution on my wall. And I just, I want to pinch myself.

To your question, the future, the future of voting rights. I think the future is bright. Maine has often been on the forefront of voting rights reforms. Ranked choice voting is a perfect example. And I think we’ve often seen bipartisan collaboration to strengthen our election laws. It’s no accident that we have all of these checks and balances in our elections.

That is the result of people really thoughtfully examining all of our processes and continuing to make our elections better and stronger. So I’m hugely optimistic. You know, one of the things that gets lost in the conversations about 2020 is that was, in fact, we had more voters participate nationally than any election previously.

And it was a completely secure election. So to do that in the wake of a pandemic is really remarkable. So I have a lot of optimism about 2024. I am very confident in the strength of our elections and the strength of our voter participation here in Maine and all across the country. 

And then I think as we move into 2025, certainly I trust that there will be folks on all sides, you know, taking a look. How can we make this stronger? How can we do this better? And when I was first secretary, I had the opportunity to testify before Congress about everything that Maine does so well. That was a lot of fun to get to brag about Maine at the national level.

It was in 2021, so it was still on Zoom, unfortunately. So I hope next time I get to brag on Maine, I can do it in person. But there are some national efforts to implement some of what we do in Maine.

So there are national efforts to implement same day voter registration. You know, the fact that we have 30 days of what we call no-excuse absentee voting where anybody can vote absentee for any reason, including going in person to the clerk’s offices to cast their ballot. That’s really cool.

And there are national efforts to expand early voting nationwide, to give more voters that opportunity to vote in a way that’s convenient and accessible to them. I think we’ve made some great strides in increasing access to voting for people with disabilities. Disability Rights Maine has been a great partner in that.

And so I continue to look forward to thinking about how we strengthen that voter accessibility. So I’m hopeful, A, that we’re going to see wonderfully huge turnout in November. Let’s make Maine number one in the nation again in 2024, just like we were in 2022.

And I’m hopeful that following the election, we can have a really thoughtful dialogue in 2025 about ways that we might strengthen our laws and make Maine a model for the rest of the nation.

[00:45:40] Eric Miller: That would be great. We love to see Maine lead the way. Thank you so much for joining us today, Secretary Bellows. It’s been a real pleasure to chat with you.

[00:45:48] Shenna Bellows: Thank you so much.

[00:45:51] Eric Miller: We would like to thank Secretary Bellows for coming on the show and thank you, listener, for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode and the previous discussions we’ve had on this podcast, please consider donating to the Maine Policy Review by visiting the journal’s website linked in the description. Our team comprises Barbara Harrity and Joyce Rumery, co-editors of Maine Policy Review.

Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. Thanks to Faculty Associate Kathryn Swacha, professional writing consultant, Maine Policy Matters writer Nicole LeBlanc, and podcast producer, editor, and writer Jayson Heim. Thanks to Nathanael Batson for composing our podcast music.

Check out mcslibrary.org to learn more about Margaret Chase Smith, the Library and Museum, and Education and Public Policy. The Maine Policy Matters website can be found in the description of this episode, along with all materials referenced in the episode, a full transcript, and social media links. You can give the team your topic suggestions and recommendations by filling out the form at the bottom of our webpage.

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