Maine’s top Democratic officials are declining to make any new efforts to secure Maine’s elections against non-citizen voting in the wake of an exclusive report from the Maine Wire showing that non-citizens are registered to vote in Maine.
The Maine Wire’s Oct. 10 report used leaked data from Medicaid, known in Maine as MaineCare, that showed the alien status of 18 individuals living in southern Maine and compared that data to voter registration information from the Maine Secretary of State’s office.
The resulting cross-check revealed that, of the 18 legal and illegal aliens, six were registered to vote and five had votes cast under their names since 2016.
Following the Maine Wire’s report, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) sent a letter to the Maine Wire asking the news outlet to turn over all records related to the report on non-citizen voting.
“The allegations in your article, if true, may constitute serious crimes under Maine law,” Frey and Bellows wrote in their Oct. 11 letter. The Constitutional Officers asked for copies of all identifying information on the six illegally registered non-citizens, as well as complete copies of the underlying whistleblower documents.
Complying with such a request, however, would expose the whistleblower who turned over the original Medicaid records, and on that basis, the Maine Wire declined to provide the Attorney General and the Secretary of State with the information they requested.
The report also triggered a wave of letters from Republicans, including the Republican National Committee’s election integrity group and Maine Republican leaders, demanding that state officials conduct an investigation or implement new election safeguards.
In a second Oct. 18 letter to the Maine Wire, Attorney General Frey, writing without Bellows, narrowed the State’s request to only a list of names, dates of birth, and addresses for the non-citizen voters the Maine Wire identified as being illegally registered to vote.
