For years, Maine Democrats have blocked Republican attempts to secure the state’s elections through widely supported safeguards like voter ID requirements. Now, thanks to the efforts of one grassroots organization, Pine Tree State conservatives’ goal of enshrining such provisions into law may soon become reality.

Last week, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows announced that backers of the proposed “Maine Require Voter Photo Identification Initiative” had gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the state’s November 2025 ballot. The measure will now head to the Maine Legislature, which can either adopt the proposal into law or send it to voters for consideration.

With the latter scenario all but certain given Democrats’ control of the lawmaking body, the group behind the initiative is gearing up to launch a statewide operation to ensure its passage this November. A project of the Maine-based Dinner Table PAC, the Voter ID for ME campaign is seeking to add Maine to the growing list of states that require photo ID for elections.

This is about “ensuring and strengthening future elections,” Dinner Table PAC Co-Founder Alex Titcomb told The Federalist.

Journey to the Ballot

According to local media, the Voter ID for ME campaign “delivered 4,410 petition forms with an estimated 171,562 signatures of voters to the [state’s] Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions” for review last month — far exceeding the minimum requirement of 67,682 valid signatures to qualify for this year’s ballot. Of the first 2,430 petition forms initially assessed by Bellows, 86,904 signatures, or 92.3 percent, were found to be “valid.”

Titcomb credited the figures to Voter ID for ME’s approximately 800 team members, whose grassroots activism made qualifying the initiative for ballot access possible.

Since launching last April, activists primarily collected signatures for the initiative near polling locations during Maine’s June primary and November general elections. In Maine, “Activists are allowed to collect signatures for petitions outside the voting area as long as there is enough room and they don’t interfere with the election process or attempt to influence voters,” according to The Portland Press Herald.

Voter ID for ME volunteers also engaged in “more traditional” signature collection efforts, such as going door-to-door and posting up at local businesses such as coffee shops. They also deployed to their local dumps, which Titcomb noted “are pretty popular spots to collect signatures in Maine.”

Voter ID for ME spent less than $25,000 on its signature collection efforts, according to Titcomb.

As previously indicated, GOP-led legislative efforts to adopt voter ID in Maine have been met with resistance from Democrats, who currently maintain trifecta control of state government. In justifying their opposition to such a commonsense measure, Pine Tree State Democrats have often regurgitated baseless leftist claims that these laws “suppress” voters and create “barriers” to voting.

“Show me the data … where it shows that it harms people and makes it more difficult [to vote],” Titcomb said. “The data that we’ve seen in the states that have recently implemented voter ID requirements, participation actually increases.”

The Initiative

Mandating eligible voters provide an acceptable form of photo ID for in-person and mail-in voting is only part of the changes proposed under the initiative, however.

If sent to and approved by voters, the measure would limit the number of ballot drop boxes to one per locality and require that a “bipartisan team of election officials” be given control of the keys to such devices instead of the municipal election clerk. As The Federalist’s Matt Kittle reported, “Unmanned absentee ballot boxes have sparked myriad election integrity concerns, including a high-profile scandal in a Connecticut election.”

The initiative would additionally require eligible voters to submit “a written application … either in person or by mail, to the registrar of the municipality” in order to receive an absentee ballot. Voters who choose this method would be mandated to include a photocopy of their photo ID or the number to their state driver’s license or “nondriver identification card.”

According to Ballotpedia, the initiative’s absentee ballot changes “would remove a provision [from state law] where voters can request an absentee ballot by telephone, and also remove a provision where voters can automatically receive absentee ballots for each election without submitting a separate request for each election.”

Titcomb said the initiative’s provisions governing drop box maintenance and absentee voting rules are designed to add “more security” around the process given the “personal identifiable information” voters would be required to disclose under the measure’s photo ID requirement.

“Those [absentee ballot] envelopes are going to have more sensitive information of the voter [such as a] photo of them, their birthday, [and] their address,” Titcomb said.

The measure also includes requirements for individuals who help a voter request an absentee ballot and a provision moving the deadline to request an absentee ballot from three business days before an election to seven days.

The Road to November

With the Maine Legislature likely to send the Voter ID for ME’s initiative to the November ballot for consideration, the organization is pulling out all the stops to get the measure across the finish line, according to Titcomb.

The Dinner Table PAC co-founder said the group’s campaign strategy will have a “grassroots flavor,” with an emphasis on getting “right-of-center” Mainers comfortable “voting in off-year elections.” “If they do that this year,” Titcomb argued, “then they’re more likely to do that next year.”

In campaigning for the initiative, Voter ID for ME volunteers will undertake traditional get-out-the-vote operations, such as door-knocking, phone banking, mass text campaigns, and digital marketing. The group is seeking to raise $2 million to assist its efforts, with the hope of deploying campaign funds toward television ads if it manages to hit the $1 million fundraising mark, according to Titcomb.

Voter ID for ME is also open to collaborating with other like-minded grassroots organizations “to help us win” in November, the Dinner Table co-founder added.

The path to approving the proposed voter ID initiative may not be as smooth as conservatives might hope, however.

While optimistic about the measure’s chances for passage, Titcomb said he wouldn’t put it past Maine Democrats to try and place a competing measure on the November ballot to sow confusion among the electorate. He noted that such a scenario would require Voter ID for ME to expend resources to “educate the voters” about which ballot initiative supports voter ID.

He also cited uncertainty about a pro-red flag law initiative potentially appearing on the November ballot, and the impact it could have on turning out left-wing voters who may be antagonistic toward election safeguards like voter ID.

“The anti-gun folks are going to be extremely well funded, and they will bring out the far left of their demographics in support of the anti-gun law,” Titcomb said. “We haven’t done official polling yet, [but] we’re waiting to see how [the red flag measure] would influence our [campaign] process with that certain segment of demographics [and] see … how those folks would vote on voter ID.”