Maine Voter Rolls Contain Thousands Of Dead And Duplicate Entries
A conservative legal group found 3,181 potentially dead voters and 693 duplicate registrations on Maine voter rolls just days before the election. The Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a complaint Tuesday with Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. They say officials failed to clean up these lists despite federal law. The state should have fixed these errors long before now.
David Adams, the head of the group, told Fox News Digital that the state hid these records on purpose. “Now we know why they were hiding them because there were problems on them,” Adams said. He argued that the state should have discovered these issues itself. Why must an outside organization such as the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncover these duplicates? Adams asked.
The filing alleges that officials failed to make any “reasonable effort” to eliminate ineligible voters from the list. Adams told Fox News that the state has “dead people” and “lots of duplicates” on the rolls. The group wants the state to remove these names immediately. They also want a plan to stop new errors from happening.
This is not the first time this group has found issues. A 2025 investigation found over 18,000 potentially dead voters and nearly 1,500 duplicate records. The state fixed many of those, but the group says new problems have appeared. Adams pointed out that Secretary Bellows has a record of attempting to “criminalize” his group for exposing these facts. He believes she is focused on “defending sort of blue theories” instead of keeping lists accurate.
The group sued Maine six years ago to get access to voter rolls. In 2024, they secured a federal appeals court victory compelling the state to release the records publicly. The complaint warns that if the state takes no action, the group will appeal under the Help America Vote Act.
Similar issues have popped up in other states. In Virginia, a dog named Biscuit received a letter restoring her voting rights. Delegate Tom Garrett confirmed that Biscuit Rigsby is a dog. He noted that officials restored rights to a “deceased animal” without proper review. He called it a question of whether the state exercised its power with basic review.
The complaint asks Maine to review the group’s analysis right away. The group is asking for “additional corrective action” to ensure compliance. If the state refuses, the group says it may have “no other recourse” but to file a formal appeal. Voters in Maine are set to cast ballots this Tuesday.
Officials have not yet responded to the specific findings of the new complaint. The group compared current numbers to their 2025 findings to show the scope of the issue. They used searches for shared addresses and names to find the duplicates. Adams insists the state must act before the election results are counted. “Unfortunately, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is not getting the job done,” he said.