Maine is not a state that is worried about voter fraud.
We can say this with considerable confidence; a referendum question that would have placed limits on voting in the name of “election security” was defeated by voters, just months ago, by a lot. By 64.2% to 35.8%, to be exact.
Nor should it be worried. There are several sources of information which we might reach for to back this up, but perhaps none more effective than an interactive “sampling” map created and faithfully updated by a little think tank called the Heritage Foundation.
Hover over a state and see for yourself. Maine, two “sample” cases (both dating to 2010). Vermont, 0 such cases. California, 71 cases for perusal. At the time of writing, its database contained 1,620 “proven instances of voter fraud” between 1982 and 2025.
Hold on to your hats.
Maine’s Question 1 looks like child’s play compared to the federal SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) America Act, which would impose yet more stringent and onerous requirements on voters. The shorthand “voter ID bill” conveniently obscures the lengths the legislation goes to by focusing on the least oppressive of its measures.
Question 1 would have introduced hurdles and labor for thousands of voters; the SAVE Act threatens to do that for millions. Would that it were only about the presentation of ID at the polls.
The bill would also remove online registration for mail-in ballots; require birth certificates, passports (recall that 49% of us don’t have one) or naturalization papers to register to vote at all; and ask that states’ voter data be submitted to the Department of Homeland Security (something attempted and failed, by this administration, due to its not being a legal requirement).
Editorializing against Question 1 back in October, the Maine Trust for Local News board put it like this: “Trust in civic, social and political institutions and processes in America is swimming against a powerful current these days, and in recent months we’ve heard from plenty of concerned readers who say they just want things tightened up.
“A reasoned campaign for increased attention to detail and tightening up is well and good. The campaign for Question 1, though, springs from fear and suspicion. It is not rooted in evidence and does not take a measured approach.”
Spiritually, the same criticism can be leveled against SAVE America, a pet proposal of President Trump’s — enthusiastically singled out as deserving of congressional support in last week’s State of the Union address, a very lengthy speech during which the president did not make mention of other sometime pets, like Greenland or Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The responses to Trump’s aggressive promotion of SAVE were instructive. The Brennan Center for Justice called it a “misleading pitch.” The New York Times characterized the president as assigning Congress “to address his false claims of voter fraud.” The Wall Street Journal called it Trump’s “one big ask.”
Listening to the president attempt to inject a sense of fear and suspicion Tuesday by saying that “they” (Democrats) are only concerned with “cheating” (“They cheat.”), it would be challenging for any of us to separate the drive to push this legislation through from mounting Republican anxiety about the outcome of the 2026 midterms.
Due to the burdensome nature of its requirements, even the most wishful Republican supporter of SAVE must understand the high administrative unlikelihood of its being anywhere near implemented by that time.
That hasn’t stopped almost every one of that party’s senators from lending their support to the bill, including Sen. Susan Collins, who surely heard about the comprehensive defeat of Question 1 in Maine last fall and can understand the message of jaded dissatisfaction that result was intended to send.
This makes Collins’ support of SAVE a particularly defiant display of loyalty to the president — if not a complacent one. It doesn’t make remote sense to us. Does it make sense to you?