#LetMEVote - Preble Street

Use our #LetMEVote social media toolkit to help educate your fellow Mainers
about why they should Vote No on Question 1 in November!

The results of Maine Referendum Question 1 will have a huge effect on voting rights in our state. On this November’s ballot, there is a referendum question asking whether voters should be required to show photo ID before voting in all future elections:

Do you want to change Maine election laws to eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, end ongoing absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, ban prepaid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes, limit the number of drop boxes, require voters to show certain photo ID before voting, and make other changes to our elections?

All pieces of this referendum are harmful, and we’re thankful that a large coalition of our partners is educating the public about how the erosion of absentee ballot access will exclude many Mainers from the voting process. At Preble Street, we also want to bring attention to the many ways a Voter ID law would suppress Maine voters, especially people experiencing homelessness, members of the BIPOC community, people with disabilities, and older adults.

1. Local, state, and federal politics all have a significant impact on the lives of the people who use Preble Street services. The candidates who are elected will make decisions regarding shelter services, the substance use epidemic, affordable housing, social safety net spending, mental healthcare availability, and other issues. When the voices of the people most impacted by these issues are left out of the conversation, we cannot call that democracy. People experiencing homelessness already face countless obstacles to voting. A photo ID requirement would be yet another hurdle to exercising this right.

2. Requiring a photo ID will prevent eligible and registered voters from voting. Many Mainers experience barriers to getting photo identification, especially people experiencing homelessness, people with low incomes, older adults, people with disabilities, and BIPOC members of our community. These challenges include transportation, finances, and access to other needed documents. A barrier to accessing certain documents should not be a barrier to the right to vote.

3. Even when people experiencing homelessness have photo IDs, external barriers make it difficult for them to keep them. There are many ways for those documents to get lost or stolen when you have to keep moving from place to place. Local governments often respond to encampments or reports of people sleeping outdoors by seizing and destroying the property of the unhoused people there. This increases the likelihood of IDs, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and other important documents being lost or tossed out. It can be nearly impossible to replace these crucial documents while unhoused. Not having a safe space for your belongings should not exclude you from the voting process.

4. Maine leads the nation in voter participation, but a recent report on Maine’s democratic process found that voter turnout in the lowest-income districts across the state was half that of the wealthiest ones. A photo ID requirement to vote will further widen this gap and further silence the voices of people with low incomes.

5. Maine’s election system is already incredibly secure. A Voter ID law would be trying to solve a problem that does not exist. The Heritage Foundation reports only two cases of voter fraud in Maine since 1982.

NEWS