Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows provided an update to the Maine Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee regarding the administration of the state’s voter registration systems in 2024 on Wednesday.
The letter, addressed to the committee chairs, Sen. Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec) and Rep. Laura Supica (D-Bangor), Bellows provided the following stats:
- Maine’s Central Voter Registration (CVR) system supported 1,040,701 active voters as of Jan. 1, 2025
- 90.8 percent of the state’s voting-age population is registered to vote, including 182,583 inactive voters
- 22,611 voter records were deleted in 2024 due to required list maintenance activities, including 12,892 deceased voters and 8,131 who had moved
The CVR, implemented in 2007 to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act, allows municipal clerks to maintain and update voter data. The data is also made available to political parties and political groups for election purposes.
Bellows praised the system but said that it depends on accurate data entry by users and voters providing complete registration information. To address modern needs, the Secretary of State’s office is in the final stages of replacing the CVR system with a more advanced platform, she said.
That upgraded system was initially planned for 2024, but deployment was delayed due to federal elections and training needs, per Bellows. The new system is now scheduled for launch in 2025.
Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has also streamlined voter enrollment, according to the Secretary of State. In 2024, 20,042 AVR transactions were completed, resulting in over 10,000 new voter registrations and nearly 8,000 updates to existing records, she said.
Additionally, Maine introduced online voter registration (OVR) in February 2024, yielding 37,975 transactions, including over 12,000 new voter registrations.
Bellows highlighted efforts to ensure data integrity through membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which facilitates cross-state data sharing. She said ERIC reports were instrumental in identifying deceased voters and duplicate records in 2024.
“Our Department remains committed to upholding the integrity and security of Maine elections,” she wrote.
Bellows did not address Maine Wire reporting on the several incidences of noncitizens who are illegally registered to vote in Maine and have had votes recorded under their names.
Bellows has called our reporting on the noncitizens who are registered to vote inaccurate. However, the only evidence Bellows has provided to support that false claim is the illegality of noncitizen voting.
The Maine Wire has also shared evidence supporting our reporting with every media outlet that asked to see it and agreed to similarly protect our sources and the identities of the noncitizens.
The Maine Wire found corresponding voter registrations for ten individuals identified as noncitizens within a set of 25 Medicaid, including six with previous voting histories.
Those noncitizens were described as “2-Legal Aliens” and “3-Other” — rather than “1-US Citizen” — within the Medicaid records.
Here’s the full letter Bellows sent to VLA:
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