Carolee Lindsey is a psychotherapist and lives in Cumberland.

Rep. Laurel Libby and MAGA would have us believe that Maine’s elections are not secure. Either they have not done their research, are misinformed or are deliberately trying to mislead the voters of Maine. Their solution in search of a fabricated problem is Question 1 on next month’s ballot.

Shenna Bellows, Maine secretary of state, is the person responsible for the oversight of elections. Her informed assessment, based on due diligence and data, concludes that Maine ranks high on the accepted metrics of integrity and accuracy of our ballots.

Our voting system also outperforms many other states on the industry’s measures. This is due in large part to paper ballots, which has been judged as strong and secure because the obvious trail provides a record.

Maine also conducts ongoing maintenance of voter rolls, meaning it removes the deceased and people who have moved out of state. And, we are part of a cross-checking registration with other states maintaining clean databases.

Election administrators have a history of being viewed as nonpartisan, and the security and fairness have been vouched for by those professionals in charge. That said, there is always room for improvement and remediation of any “real problems,” and not blatant efforts at crisis framing and power consolidation.

Question 1 would have you believe our voting system lacks fairness and oversight and the fix is voter IDs, restriction of access and prepaid postage of absentee ballots, reduction of drop boxes and creating more obstacles to voting, especially for our elderly and disabled.

The deceptive lawn signs and talking points that Question 1 would “secure voting ” is nothing more than a one-sided agenda to manipulate an unbroken system to favor the GOP and execute policy changes as outlined under “election integrity,” from the Heritage Foundation manifesto called Project 2025.

The language similarities across multiple issues and geographic areas, and four-alarm rhetoric regarding alleged corrupt and fraudulent elections, is part of the conservative ideological push to manipulate government to not only restrict voting, but to dismantle and realign policies and regulatory programs such as environmental protections, labor rights, health care, education, social welfare and more.

We have already witnessed the tsunami destruction of government and federal programs, not to eliminate “fraud and abuse,” but to disenfranchise a large segment of society deemed unworthy of governmental participation and protections.

It is the Christian nationalist agenda, as authored by the Heritage Foundation, rapidly being enacted across programs, policies and protections, in service of remaking our government and extinguishing participatory democracy.

Forty-five percent of Mainers voted by absentee ballot in the 2024 election and 60% of seniors. Voters need to read the fine print and not be bullied and frightened by disingenuous tactics used by the far right to marginalize and suppress, an anathema of inclusive democracy.

Question 1 is not about the people of Maine and working to address what might negatively jeopardize our voting security. It is about following the Heritage Foundation blueprint of voter restriction. It is not about the integrity of our voting. It is about the integrity of our elected officials — and ourselves.