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Secretary of State Shenna Bellows greets election volunteers Susan Cook, right, and Richard Yarnold after they finished registering voter Daniel Amory, right, at the Portland Expo in June 2024. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

The No Labels Party, a third party that promoted itself as a centrist option committed to “fighting the extremes,” has officially withdrawn as a registered political party in Maine.

Party leaders had announced their intention to withdraw in June 2024 — just a few months after No Labels officially qualified for the ballot in Maine. But at the time, there was no mechanism for a party to withdraw itself, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in a written statement Thursday.

Last week, Bellows said, a new state law went into effect that allows political parties to voluntarily dissolve via a written request signed by the party’s chair.

Former leaders of No Labels Maine could not be reached Thursday, and a national spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bellows said Maine voters formerly registered with No Labels are now considered unenrolled, sometimes referred to as independent. Those voters may remain unaffiliated, or they can enroll with a different party on the state’s website.

In 2023, No Labels gathered thousands of signatures from Maine voters to qualify as an official political party in the state but drew some criticism over its signature-gathering tactics, including a formal rebuke from Bellows.

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Bellows sent a cease-and-desist letter to the group’s director of ballot access that May, saying some Maine voters felt misled because they thought they were merely signing a petition when they were actually being asked to change their party enrollment to No Labels.

Roughly 800 Maine voters rescinded their enrollment in No Labels after Bellows sent letters to nearly 7,000 people who had agreed to join the party, telling them how to unenroll if they did not understand what they had signed and had not intended to change parties.

Despite that, the party still had over 9,400 Maine voters enrolled when it was officially recognized in January 2024.

At that time, No Labels had qualified for the ballot in 13 states and said it planned to more than double that number.

But by April 2024, the party had abandoned its effort to put forth a presidential candidate for the 2024 election after a number of prominent figures declined to run, the New York Times reported.

Those potential candidates had included former Sens. Joe Manchin and Joe Lieberman — the party’s highest-profile supporter, who died in March 2024 — and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

Drew is the night reporter for the Portland Press Herald. He previously covered South Portland, Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth for the Sentry, Leader and Southern Forecaster. Though he is from Massachusetts,...

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