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As Communities Say 'ICE Not Welcome,' Maine Halts Undercover License Plates for Federal Agents
"Maine is our home," said Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner, "and we’re not going to let ICE agents terrorize our communities without resistance."
Jan 19, 2026
As residents of Maine continue to prepare for and speak out against an anticipated surge of federal immigration agents operating in their communities, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows over the weekend suspended the issuance of undercover license plates requested by the US Border Patrol.
With Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and others continuing to terrorize Minneapolis, people in Maine have been on high alert since last week, when reports indicated that Maine was next on the target list of President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“These requests in light of rumors of ICE deployment to Maine and abuses of power in Minnesota and elsewhere raise concerns,” Bellows said in a written statement on Saturday.
"We have not revoked existing plates but have paused issuance of new plates," she added. "We want to be assured that Maine plates will not be used for lawless purposes."
"Those wielding Trump's fascist agenda to divide us will fail because in Maine we stand with and will always protect our immigrant neighbors." —Shenna Bellows, Maine Secretary of State
Use of unmarked vehicles has been a hallmark of ICE and Border Patrol operations during Trump's second term, with agents—many of them masked—using the cars to swoop into work sites, bus stops, retail locations, and residential neighborhoods to target people they claim are in the country unlawfully.
"ICE’s lawless tactics are not welcome in Maine," Bellows said in a social media post last week. "In the United States, people cannot be taken off the street by masked agents, thrown in unmarked cars, and disappeared. That’s kidnapping, not law enforcement. Those wielding Trump's fascist agenda to divide us will fail because in Maine we stand with and will always protect our immigrant neighbors."
Ryan Guay, a supervisory deputy for the US Marshals Service District of Maine, told the Portland Press Herald he was surprised to learn of the change and warned that not having "covert status" would negatively impact the ability of federal agents to operate safely in the state.
“This is a drastic change from historical precedent that gives us great concern,” said Guay, who added that next steps were being explored. “I’m engaged with our national office and offices around the country to kind of figure out what to do, as this is not a common occurrence at all,” he said.
On Friday, the ACLU of Maine, where Bellows once worked as executive director, released guidance for community members fearful of the increased presence and harassment by federal agents.
“The ACLU of Maine condemns this agency’s brutal, unlawful, and unprecedented assault on communities across the country,” said ACLU of Maine executive director Molly Curren Rowles. “Every person in the United States has the fundamental freedom to speak out, move around our communities, and gather together. ICE’s reckless actions and lack of accountability are making all people less safe and threatening our basic constitutional rights. This should not be a politicized issue. The United States is not a place where civilians face masked, armed troops and agents in our streets. If we believe in the vision of this country as the ‘Land of the Free’ then we all must get involved to support the rule of law and demand that Congress stop ICE funding and bring the agency under control.”
Large protests against the arrival of more federal agents took place in downtown Portland, the state's largest city, on both Saturday and Sunday. Both Portland and Lewiston, the second largest city in the state, have large refugee and immigrant communities, putting residents in those communities on heightened alert.
Graham Platner, running in the Democratic primary for US Senate, said in a video posted to social media over the weekend that it's vital for Mainers to care for their vulnerable neighbors and understand their rights when it comes to interacting with federal immigration officials.
"Maine is our home, and we’re not going to let ICE agents terrorize our communities without resistance," said Platner.
Maine is our home, and we’re not going to let ICE agents terrorize our communities without resistance.
What to expect in the coming days, and what you can do about it: pic.twitter.com/9N1hIyvcug
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) January 17, 2026
Jacob Ellis, an organizer of weekend protests in Portland, said the message people in the city most want conveyed to ICE agents is this: “You are not welcome here. You will never be welcome here.”
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Maine Judge Defers on Trump Ballot Decision Until Supreme Court Ruling
"Ultimately, we're happy with the court's decision to leave the secretary's ruling intact: that Trump is an insurrectionist and that the 14th Amendment applies," said one of the Mainers who sought his removal.
Jan 17, 2024
A Maine judge on Wednesday declined to weigh in on former President Donald Trump's challenge to his recent removal from the state's Republican presidential primary ballot, citing the looming U.S. Supreme Court decision in a similar case.
The U.S. Supreme Court—which has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—has agreed to hear a case out of Colorado, whose state Supreme Court last month barred the twice-impeached former president from this year's primary ballot. The justices plan to hear arguments in Trump v. Anderson on February 8.
Colorado and Maine are the only states that have determined the GOP front-runner should be barred from the ballot, but other initiatives are underway elsewhere. The lawsuits and applications to state election officials all rely on the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who took an oath to the U.S. Constitution and then engaged in insurrection from holding office.
In response to petitions from Maine voters, Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows disqualified Trump in December, noting that he, "over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power."
Trump—who on Monday won Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses, despite the 14th Amendment fights and his four ongoing criminal cases—appealed Bellows' decision, which led to Kennebec County Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy's deferral on Wednesday. Murphy was initially appointed by a Democratic governor and then reappointed by a Republican.
"Maine's primary election is March 5, 2024, and the agreement by all the parties to stay the secretary's decision until Anderson is decided is important," Murphy wrote. "Unless the Supreme Court before that date finds President Trump disqualified to hold the office of president, eligible Maine voters who wish to cast their vote for him in the primary will be able to do so, with the winner being determined by ranked-choice voting."
One of the Mainers behind a petition to remove Trump, Democratic former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling, said Wednesday: "Ultimately, we're happy with the court's decision to leave the secretary's ruling intact: that Trump is an insurrectionist and that the 14th Amendment applies. We'll decide next steps soon."
Murphy's move followed a similar decision by the Oregon Supreme Court, which last week deferred to the nation's highest court in a 14th Amendment case.
Free Speech for People, the group behind the Oregon case, called that decision "disappointing," adding: "While it is certainly possible that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. Anderson may resolve some or all of the issues in this case, it is also entirely possible that the U.S. Supreme Court may resolve that case based on particular details of the Colorado proceeding or that it may issue an order that does not resolve this case."
"Furthermore, no one knows when that decision will issue," the group stressed. "Waiting until the U.S. Supreme Court issues its order only compresses the time that the Oregon Supreme Court may have to resolve the issues that may remain if the U.S. Supreme Court does not fully resolve all the issues in this case."
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Trump Appeals Removal From Maine Primary Ballot
"This is part of the process," the secretary of state responded. "I have confidence in my decision and confidence in the rule of law."
Jan 02, 2024
Attorneys for former U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday filed an expected appeal in the Maine Superior Court after the secretary of state barred the Republican front-runner from the state's 2024 primary ballot in response to formal legal challenges from voters.
Trump's presidential campaign had vowed to fight against Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' determination last week that he is not qualified to serve as president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
In the Tuesday filing, Trump's team argues that Bellows "was a biased decisionmaker who should have recused herself and otherwise failed to provide lawful due process," lacked legal authority to consider the federal constitutional issues presented by the challengers, and "made multiple errors of law and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner."
Bellows pointed out to The Associated Press on Tuesday that she had suspended her decision until the courts rule on any appeal.
"This is part of the process. I have confidence in my decision and confidence in the rule of law," she told the AP of Trump's appeal. "This is Maine's process and it's really important that first and foremost every single one of us who serves in government uphold the Constitution and the laws of the state."
The battle in Maine comes as the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court considers whether to hear a challenge to Trump's eligibility in Colorado, where the state Supreme Court kicked him off the primary ballot last month, also citing the 14th Amendment.
The Colorado Republican Party asked the nation's highest court to weigh in on the case, which was launched by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and law firms representing GOP and unaffiliated voters.
As the Colorado voters' legal team filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, CREW president and CEO Noah Bookbinder said in a statement that "Donald Trump's unprecedented actions on January 6, 2021 unquestionably bar him from Colorado primary ballots under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, as determined by the Colorado Supreme Court."
"Today's brief underscores that Section 3 applies to former presidents, that our clients had the right to bring this challenge under Colorado state law, and that the First Amendment does not allow a state party to list disqualified candidates on the ballot," he added. "It is crucial that the Supreme Court take up and review this case quickly so that Colorodans and the American public have complete clarity on Donald Trump's eligibility before casting their ballots."
While Trump appointed three current members of the U.S. Supreme Court—Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—congressional Democrats have called on conservative Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from the Colorado case and any similar ones, given that his wife, Ginni Thomas, participated in the far-right effort to overthrow the 2020 election.
Both Bellows and Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold have faced threats because of Trump's disqualifications.
Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, and Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor who is now of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, defended Bellows' decision in a Tuesday opinion piece published by The Boston Globe.
"Bellows' decision enacted, in word and in deed, the too rarely remembered reality that the fair interpretation and faithful application of statutory as well as constitutional law is entrusted no less to executives than to judges—and that the U.S. system for electing presidents expressly empowers state legislatures to decide how each state's selection is to be made," the pair wrote.
"While we await that appeal and the Supreme Court's decision to review the Colorado Supreme Court's disqualification ruling, Bellows' decision stands as a paradigm," they added. "We are all witnesses to how a fearless public official exercises her delegated state authority in our Constitution's intricate federal system."
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Maine, Colorado Officials Face Threats After Trump Barred From Ballots
"This behavior is unacceptable," declared Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows while her Colorado counterpart, Jena Griswold, vowed that "I will not be intimidated."
Dec 31, 2023
Depending on the decisions of U.S. courts, former President Donald Trump won't appear on 2024 primary ballots in Maine and Colorado—recent developments that have led to threats against top election officials in those states.
Trump is the GOP's front-runner to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden—who is seeking reelection next year—despite the Republican's ongoing criminal cases and arguments that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution disqualifies him from holding office again because he incited the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
In response to Maine voters formally challenging Trump's eligibility under the 14th Amendment, Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows barred him from the primary ballot on Thursday—though she suspended the decision until courts rule on any appeal, and his campaign plans to file one. A day later, her home was "swatted."
"We should be able to agree to disagree on important issues without threats and violence."
"We are away for the holiday weekend. We were not home yesterday when threats escalated, and our home address was posted online," Bellows explained on Facebook Saturday. "It was a good thing because our home was swatted last night. That's when someone calls in a fake emergency to evoke a strong law enforcement response to scare the target. Swatting incidents have resulted in casualties although thankfully this one did not."
"This behavior is unacceptable," she declared. "The nonstop threatening communications the people who work for me endured all day yesterday is unacceptable. It's designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message."
After a hoax emergency call in which an individual claimed he had broken into the secretary's residence on Friday night, Maine State Police "conducted an investigation of the exterior and interior of the home at Bellows' request," News Center Maine reported, citing state Department of Public Safety spokesperson Shannon Moss.
"Moss said nothing suspicious was found," the outlet noted. "The incident is still under investigation, and Moss said no further information will be released at this time."
Along with slamming the swatting, Bellows on Saturday called out "extraordinarily dehumanizing fake images" of her recently posted online, including by the Maine Wire: "These dehumanizing images and threatening communications directed at me and people I love are dangerous. We should be able to agree to disagree on important issues without threats and violence."
Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold has also faced mounting threats since the Colorado Supreme Court earlier this month disqualified Trump from the state's primary ballot—a decision that is expected to be swiftly reviewed by the right-wing majority U.S. Supreme Court, to which the ex-president appointed three justices.
"Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats. I stopped counting after that," Griswold said Saturday on social media. "I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence."
Griswold also shared a recent HuffPost interview in which she discussed threats against her from Trump supporters.
"I've been concerned about violence and threats of violence since Donald Trump incited the insurrection," said Griswold, who has been Colorado's secretary of state since 2019. "I've received hundreds if not thousands of threats at this point."
"So yes, I'm extremely concerned," she told HuffPost. "It just underlines that Donald Trump is a major threat to American democracy, elections, and stability. He uses threats and intimidation against his political opponents. When he doesn't win elections, he tries to steal them. He is a dangerous leader for this country."
Griswold also pointed out that she is part of the case that got Trump kicked off the ballot in Colorado because of her role, but she didn't file the suit—it was brought by a watchdog group and legal team representing GOP and unaffiliated voters.
Griswold further explained in an MSNBC appearance on Friday that "in Maine, the secretary of state makes determinations like this. By the way, in Colorado, I would also be in the place of making a determination if a lawsuit wasn't filed so early."
"But in Maine, I think Shenna Bellows made the right decision in agreement with the Colorado Supreme Court," she said. "Donald Trump incited an insurrection to try to steal the presidency from the American people. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment makes it very clear that elected officials can't do that and then serve in office again."
"I don't believe there should be some loophole in the Constitution that puts only Donald Trump above the law and Constitution when he incites rebellion or incites an insurrection," she continued. "The other thing I would say is I do think Secretary Bellows is brave and courageous."
"She is the first individual by herself having to make this decision," Griswold noted. "And we are acutely aware of the threat environment that we work in. So I commend her for her actions and we'll see how the litigation inevitably plays out in the state of Maine."
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Bellows Is Right: Use Every Tool Available to Defeat Trump
Trump is too dangerous to the future of the planet for us to play nice with people who never, ever play nice.
Dec 29, 2023
Kudos to Shenna Bellows! The secretary of state in Maine has done what every Republican would have done in the current situation, were the shoe on the other foot. If the Republicans had the opportunity to disqualify a candidate they consider an immediate threat to the survival of the world, there would be no restraint. When she used her power to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Maine, she set an example that hopefully will wake up other Democrats. She runs the elections in Maine—will she have the guts to stand up to a Trump-appointed judge should they overturn her decision?
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is crystal clear: Donald Trump is not qualified to run for or hold office in the United States. The language is very specific, and if we lived in a nation where fairness was valued, this would not even be a question.
The situation we face now is that the Trump cult is ready, willing, and able to cheat in any and every way to take over power in the United States. It is way past time for the center and the left to use every tool we have available. The hand-wringing and self-recrimination over prosecuting Trump for his many crimes has got to end. Even some on the left have been saying that we have to defeat Trump at the ballot box instead of using his own actions. Should those who attempted to assassinate Hitler have waited until the next election? Oops—there was never going to be another election. Trump is too dangerous to the future of the planet for us to play nice with people who never, ever play nice.
Every one of us who is committed to protecting our ability to speak freely, to welcome immigrants into our country, who believe in a multicultural democracy, had better get out and get voters to oppose Trump.
This current crop of Republicans is already guilty of an amazing array of dirty tricks in order to insure long-term electoral power, and they hope permanent minority rule over all of us. It was not too long ago that the Republicans stole at least one, and some of us believe two, seats on the Supreme Court in a completely immoral, unprecedented, and barely legal manner. This corrupt Supreme Court has stolen voting rights from Black voters by gutting the Voting Rights Act. They have permitted what would be considered outrageous gerrymanders in swing states and pure red states to limit the voting of Black citizens.
There is no legal action to demand more opportunities to vote when cities with a large Black population are stripped of sites, so voters have to stand in line for 8 to 10 hours, while those of us in small towns and suburbs can waltz into the voting site, say howdy to our town clerk, vote, and leave in 10 minutes or less.
In Florida, nearly 65% of the citizens voted in a referendum to restore voting rights to felons. The state has undermined it, with support from Trump appointed criminals (aka judges), by creating a new category of "court fees" that these mostly poor and mostly non-white people are forced to pay in order to vote. The dirty tricks abound—when will we again see the demand that Black voters cite the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to earn the right to the franchise?
The irony that Donald Trump, who used countless tweets and statements to attack Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency—the "birther" nonsense—has now actually disqualified himself should not be left unstated. Whenever Trump defends his right to be on the ballot, his attacks on Obama should be pulled out from the past, Somebody must have explained the rules to qualify for the presidency to Trump and he decided that, because Barack Obama is not white, that made him unamerican.
The Democrats and the left must be tougher. As 2024 begins, the coalition of those who understand the peril of another Trump term should be organizing poll watchers for every site with non-white voters. We need to be the eyes to the system. Lawyers, or those trained by lawyers, need to be available on call to assist those who are being denied the right to register or to vote.
As terrible as this sounds, we need to be more like our opposition but in a smart way: Trump and his crimes need to not only be called out every day in creative ways. Trump invents stupid names for his opponents; we need to begin inventing some smart ways to call out these guys for who they are. We need to make public Trump's most vile and violent insults every time they come out of his mouth. The corporate media and the court system has given this guy a pass. Almost anyone else would be serving time in prison for the constant death threats to those he dislikes. The press allows the life-long racist Trump to call strong Black women like Fani Willis and Letitia James racists without a direct challenge—a use of the term that is totally bogus, as true racism is part of a system of oppression of the powerless by the powerful. This nonsense needs to be countered whenever it comes out of his hateful mouth with tough talk about real racism.
The fascist movement in the United States has come a very long way in the past 10 years. It is clear that the Kochs and the other oil, gas, and chemical barons have been planning this takeover for a long time—the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and lots of other secretive organizations have plowed the ground for a cruel, hateful, and corrupt Donald Trump. Large corporations have basically decided to go along with Trump in exchange for eliminating regulations and taxes. And these corporations largely own the media. So we, every one of us who is committed to protecting our ability to speak freely, to welcome immigrants into our country, who believe in a multicultural democracy, had better get out and get voters to oppose Trump. Because we may never get another chance.
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'He Is Not Qualified': Maine Bars Trump From Primary Ballot
"The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multimonth effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match."
Dec 28, 2023
Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday barred former U.S. President Trump from the Republican 2024 primary ballot, determining that "he is not qualified to hold the office of the president under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment" to the country's Constitution.
Despite several ongoing criminal cases, Trump is currently the Republican front-runner for next year's presidential contest, in which Democratic President Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, is seeking reelection.
The decision in Maine comes just weeks away from the Iowa caucuses and amid multiple legal battles aiming to boot Trump from ballots for inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection—including in Colorado, where the state Supreme Court disqualified him last week, a decision that could soon be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, to which he appointed three justices.
"Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it."
Bellows' move—which will ultimately be decided in the courts—came in response to three challenges filed to Trump's nomination, two based on the 14th Amendment and one citing the 22nd Amendment. The former bars anyone who has taken an oath to the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection from holding office again, while the latter sets a two-term limit for presidents.
The Maine official said Thursday that "there appears to be no dispute between any of the parties that President Biden prevailed over Mr. Trump. Therefore, given Mr. Trump has only won a single election for president, he is not barred from being elected to the same office again under the 22nd Amendment."
However, regarding the 14th Amendment arguments, she found that "the record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power."
"I likewise conclude that Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it," she wrote in the 34-page decision.
Bellows stressed that "Mr. Trump's occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions. A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months, culminating in his speech on the Ellipse. The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multimonth effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match."
"I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection," she wrote.
Citing a relevant state law, Bellows said that "the oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine's election laws, when presented with a Section 336 challenge, is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek."
"The events of January 6, 2021 were unprecedented and tragic," she added. "They were an attack not only upon the Capitol and government officials, but also an attack on the rule of law. The evidence here demonstrates that they occurred at the behest of, and with the knowledge and support of, the outgoing president. The U.S. Constitution does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government, and Section 336 requires me to act in response."
The secretary suspended the effect of her decision until the Maine Superior Court rules on any appeal, or the appeal period expires.
In a lengthy statement noting similar fights in other states, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said that "we will quickly file a legal objection in state court to prevent this atrocious decision in Maine from taking effect."
He also took aim at Bellows, saying that "the Maine secretary of state is a former ACLU attorney, a virulent leftist, and a hyperpartisan Biden-supporting Democrat who has decided to interfere in the presidential election on behalf of Crooked Joe Biden."
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said on social media that the U.S. Supreme Court "will surely have the final word."
As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and law firms representing six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters who brought the 14th Amendment challenge in the state are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on their case by February 11, given the timeline for mailing ballots.
Law Dork's Chris Geidner said Thursday that a Supreme Court review "is made almost certain given a new ruling from Maine's secretary of state."
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MoveOn Urges States to Investigate No Labels for Misleading, Disenfranchising Voters
"No Labels should practice what they preach about uniting the country, stop misleading voters, and end their ill-advised and dangerous dark-money-funded third-party ticket," said MoveOn's executive director.
Jun 29, 2023
The grassroots progressive group MoveOn on Wednesday called on secretaries of state across the U.S. to open investigations into No Labels, the political organization that has reportedly managed to gather the support it needs to be included on 2024 election ballots in four states so far.
The group has done that, said MoveOn, by having canvassers mislead voters into signing party enrollment forms and making it look like it has more affiliated members in the states than it really does—all while disenfranchising those voters.
MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting wrote to secretaries of state to warn them that No Labels, which aims to run a so-called "unity ticket" in 2024 with a Democratic and a Republican candidate, is sending organizers into communities with what they claim are petitions to support the group's inclusion on ballots.
As Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) warned residents of her state last month, the voters are actually signing an enrollment document and changing their party affiliation to No Labels.
"Voters were not informed that they were changing their political party to No Labels and, therefore, would be barred from participating in Democratic or Republican primaries, which are open only to registered members of those parties or to Independents," wrote Epting on Wednesday in a letter to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias (D).
In May, Bellows wrote to the director of ballot access for No Labels, Nicholas Connors, telling him that municipal clerks throughout Maine have alerted her office to dozens of voters who signed the group's "petition" and later realized they had been enrolled in the No Labels Party.
Dr. Ben Chavis, the Democratic co-chair of No Labels, told the Associated Press after Bellows wrote to the group that "suggesting that a majority of Maine voters who signed up with No Labels did not know what they were doing is not true."
According to Bellows, "these voters have further stated that No Labels organizers did not disclose—and the voters did not understand—that No Labels was asking them to change their party enrollment."
"To the extent representatives of No Labels are telling Maine voters that, by filling out voter registration cards, they are signing or supporting a 'petition,' No Labels should immediately cease and desist from doing so," she told Connors.
Epting asked secretaries of state across the country to "ensure these same practices cited in the Maine secretary of state's letter are not happening" in other states and that No Labels' operations in their jurisdictions are "legal and above board."
"Reports that No Labels is misleading voters and potentially violating election laws, are deeply concerning and call into question the group's entire operation," Epting told The Messenger on Wednesday. "We urge election officials in every state to ensure voters are protected from No Labels' deception."
No Labels has garnered criticism in recent weeks for its secrecy surrounding its donors, which a co-founder of the group admitted in a local news interview in Denver this week would "[open] people up to incredible scrutiny."
While the group has refused to publicly identify its funders, as Common Dreams reported in May, contributors in recent years have included Republican billionaire donor Louis Bacon and former President Donald Trump supporter Nelson Peltz.
A firm with ties to right-wing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has also helped No Labels with its signature-gathering operation in Colorado, one of four states—along with Oregon, Arizona, and Alaska—where the group has managed to secure a spot on 2024 ballots.
"No Labels," Epting told The Messenger, "should practice what they preach about uniting the country, stop misleading voters, and end their ill-advised and dangerous dark-money-funded third-party ticket."
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