Maine and Texas are the latest fronts in the voting battles, with voter ID and citizenship on the ballot

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s elections in recent years have been relatively problem-free, and verified cases of voter fraud are extremely rare.

That’s not stopping Republicans from pushing for big changes in the way the state conducts its voting.

Maine is one of two states with election-related initiatives on the Nov. 4 ballot, but it is putting the far-reaching measure before voters. In Texas, Republicans are asking voters to make clear in the state constitution that people who are not US citizens are not eligible to vote.

Maine Question 1 focuses on the voter ID requirement, but is more comprehensive in nature. The initiative, which has the support of an influential conservative group in the state, would also limit the use of drop boxes to just one per municipality and create restrictions on absentee voting even as the practice grows in popularity.

Voters in both states will decide actions as President Donald Trump continues to lie about the widespread fraud that led to his loss in the 2020 presidential election and make unsubstantiated claims about future election fraud, a strategy that has become routine during election years. Republicans in Congress and state legislatures are pushing to establish citizenship requirements for registration and voting, but with only limited success.

Maine’s initiative would enforce voter ID and restrict absentee voting

Maine’s proposal seeks to require voters to show voter ID before casting a ballot, a provision that has been adopted in several other states, mostly those controlled by Republicans. In April, Wisconsin voters included an existing voter ID law into the state constitution.

Question 1 would also eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit absentee ballot requests by phone or family members, end absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, and limit the number of drop boxes, among other changes.

Absentee voting is very popular in Maine, where Democrats control the legislature and governor’s office, and voters have elected a Republican and an independent to the US Senate. Nearly half of voters there used absentee voting in the 2024 presidential election.

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Gov. Janet Mills is one of several Democrats in the state who have spoken out against the proposed changes.

“Whether you vote in person or by absentee ballot, you can trust that your vote will be counted fairly,” Mills said. “But this fundamental right to vote is under attack from the first question.”

Supporters of the voter ID push said it’s about enhancing election security.

“There’s been a lot of hype about what it’s supposed to do, but here’s the simple truth: The first question is about securing Maine’s elections,” said Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, a supporter of the measure.

One of the ballot initiative’s main backers is Dinner Table PAC, a conservative group in the state. Dinner Table launched Voter ID for the Middle East, which raised more than $600,000 to promote the initiative. The bulk of that money comes from the Republican State Leadership Committee, which advocates for Republican candidates and statewide initiatives across the country. Save Maine Absentee Voting, a state group that opposes the initiative, has raised more than $1.6 million, with the National Education Association being its largest donor.

Campaigns for and against the initiative begin as the state and the FBI investigate how dozens of unmarked ballots that were supposed to be used in this year’s election ended up inside a woman’s Amazon order. The Secretary of State’s office says blank ballots, which are still bundled and wrapped in plastic, will not be used in the election.

Texas voters consider citizenship requirement

In Texas, voters are deciding whether to add language to the state constitution that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other supporters say will ensure noncitizens cannot vote in any elections there. State and federal laws already make it illegal for noncitizens to vote.

Thirteen states have made similar changes to their constitutions since North Dakota first did so in 2018. The proposed constitutional amendments are on the ballot in November 2026 in Kansas and South Dakota.

These measures have proven popular so far, winning approval with an average of 72% of the vote.

“I think it needs to sweep the nation,” said Republican state Rep. AJ Louderback, who represents a southwest Houston district. “I think we need to clean up this mess.”

Voters already have to attest that they are US citizens when they register, and voting by noncitizens, which is rare, is punishable as a felony and can lead to deportation.

Louderback and other supporters of such amendments point to policies in at least 20 communities across the country that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, though none exist in Texas. They include Oakland and San Francisco in California, where noncitizens can cast ballots in school board races if they have children in public schools, the District of Columbia, and several cities in Maryland and Vermont.

Other states, including Kansas, have language in their constitutions that puts the citizenship requirement in positive terms: Any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 is eligible to vote. In some states, the amendments rewrote the language to make it more akin to prohibition: only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote.

The Texas Constitution’s Voting Clause currently begins with a list of three “classes of persons ineligible to vote”: persons under the age of 18, convicted felons, and those “who have been determined by a court to be mentally incompetent.” The November 4th amendment would add a fourth element, which is “persons who are not citizens of the United States.”

Critics say the proposed changes are unnecessary

Critics say Maine’s voter ID requirement and Texas’ noncitizen entry ban are solutions in search of a problem and reinforce the GOP’s long-standing conservative narrative that noncitizen voting is a major problem, when in fact it is extremely rare.

In Texas, the Secretary of State’s Office recently announced that it had found the names of 2,700 “probable noncitizens” on its registration lists out of nearly 18.5 million registered voters in the state.

Promoting this narrative encourages discrimination and incites fear of state retaliation among naturalized citizens and people of color, said Veronica Warms, staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. Her group works to protect the rights of those groups and immigrants and opposes the proposed amendment.

“This serves no purpose other than to reinforce the lie that non-citizens are trying to subvert our democratic process,” she said. “This is merely reinforcing a harmful narrative that will make people more terrified in exercising their constitutional right.”

Mark Brewer, chair of the University of Maine’s political science department, said approving the first question in Maine would likely make voting more difficult overall. He added that allegations of widespread voter fraud are not supported by evidence.

“The data show that the more restrictions and restrictions on voting there are, the more difficult it becomes to vote and the fewer people will vote,” he said.

Hannah reported from Topeka, Kansas.