Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has admitted that non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in Maine’s elections.
“I’m sure there are in some isolated instances maybe some non-citizens on the rolls,” Bellows said.
Secretary Bellows made the comment in a YouTube interview with controversial left-wing lawyer Marc Elias, a media personality Bellows has paid at least $12,000 this year, according to campaign finance filings.
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On a related theme, a Lewiston Adult Ed teacher recently revealed to Chuck Ellis on the Muddy Waters podcast that he witnessed non-citizen students excitedly talking about getting mail-in ballots in advance of the 2024 election.
According to Greg Yates, one non-citizen participating in Lewiston’s adult education programs explained to him that he’d been instructed by an unnamed party that anyone who pays taxes in Maine is eligible to vote.
Before that same election, a Spanish-language interpreter told the Maine Wire that she’d witnessed a Portland welfare clerk attempt to register a Venezuelan illegal alien to vote after seeing first-hand evidence that the migrant was not legally allowed to vote. Here’s that story from October:
Maine Welfare Clerk Gave Voter Registration Forms to Paroled Illegal Alien from Venezuela, Says Spanish Interpreter
The State of Maine welfare office in Portland attempted to help a Venezuelan illegal alien vote on Sept. 23, according to the non-citizen’s Spanish-language interpreter, who works with immigrants in Maine seeking welfare benefits.
“She was applying for MaineCare and Food Stamps, and they asked her if she wanted to register to vote,” said the interpreter, Doris Rodriguez, a 72-year-old resident of the greater Portland area.
Rodriguez, who intervened to prevent her client from potentially committing a deportable offense, said a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) employee told her that welfare clerks had been instructed to offer voter registration documents to any non-citizen applying for benefits.
“I said, ‘What do you mean? She can’t vote. She’s here illegally,'” Rodriguez recalled.
Rodriguez declined to identify her client or the welfare clerk. She said this was the first time she had seen a welfare clerk attempt to provide a non-citizen with voter registration documents despite clearly understanding that the client was ineligible to vote.
“I said, ‘Why would you ask her that?’ I mean, if she votes, she goes to prison. It’s a federal offense,” said Rodriguez.
Only U.S. citizens and naturalized U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in national, state, and local elections in Maine.
Non-citizens who nonetheless register to vote risk prosecution, deportation, and possible adverse judgement against any claim for asylum or refugee status.
Rodriguez has served Spanish-speaking clients in the Portland area for more than a year. She said the welfare clerk informed her she had been instructed to offer the voter registration forms by someone higher ranking than her at the welfare agency.
“[S]he kind of looked down at the paper and she said, ‘Well, that’s what I was told to do, to ask,’ you know,” said Rodriguez.
“She said that she was told by the head of by DHHS to ask the clients that are requesting benefits if they want to register to vote, even if they’re not legal citizens,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez recalled that the DHHS clerk’s attempt to register the Venezuelan illegal alien to vote occurred on Sept. 23 around 2pm at the Portland DHHS office.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and Deputy Secretary of State Emily Cook did not respond to an Oct. 3 email asking whether they were aware that the Portland welfare office was potentially helping non-citizens to illegally register to vote.
Lindsay Hammes, the spokesperson for Maine DHHS, also declined to comment for this story.
The Maine Wire was unable to identify who may have issued the directive to welfare clerks that non-citizens should be offered voter registration forms.
According to Rodriguez, her client entered the U.S. illegally over the southern border in Dec. 2023 along with her two sons.
The client had lived in the interior of the country without authorization until last month, when Rodriguez helped her file an I-589 claim for asylum. The pair were at the Portland welfare office because an I-589, stamped and returned from the federal government, made the woman eligible for certain welfare benefits.
Asylum seekers are generally not eligible for federal benefits like Food Stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) and Medicaid, a medical welfare program for poor and indigent Americans.
However, Maine has its own policies that allow some classes of non-citizens to receive various levels of taxpayer-funded benefits, either through municipalities or through the state. Some non-citizens, depending on their status and country of origin, may obtain federal benefits through the Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA) program.
The client’s asylum claim will now be heard by an Immigration Court judge, though that process could take several years as the asylum system currently has a massive backlog of cases due to the record number of illegal aliens entering the U.S. and filing asylum claims.
While the asylum claim is pending in the immigration court system, the Venezuelan national will be paroled within the U.S., and, after a six-month waiting period, she will receive work authorization and the equivalent of a Social Security Number, which will allow her to work legally in the U.S.
If her asylum claim is ultimately rejected, she will be expected to self-deport to Venezuela.
