On November 4, Maine voters will decide whether the state will begin requiring residents to show photo ID in order to vote, whether in person or by mail. Among those voting will be some of the 1,600 or so people in custody of the Maine Department of Corrections (MDOC), one of the only two state prison systems where people serving a felony sentence retain their right to vote.
If passed, the measure would still leave incarcerated people a pathway to vote. But it would add another barrier to an already high-barrier process, and dramatically restrict access to the polls for non-incarcerated voters across the state.
Maine, the only state to bring citizen-initiated measures in 2025, has two questions on the November 4 ballot. Question 1, officially the Require Voter Photo ID and Change Absentee Ballot and Drop Box Rules Initiative, would amend state election law with a requirement to show photo ID at the ballot box and when requesting an absentee ballot—but it would also go a lot further.
It would remove the ability to request an absentee ballot by phone. It would also prohibit requests through a family member. It would further prohibit automatic requests for absentee ballots, instead requiring a separate request for every election. About 45 percent of voters in Maine rely on absentee ballots.
United States citizens detained pre-trial still have the right to vote, as do people serving jail time for misdemeanor convictions. Utah allowed prisoners to vote until 1998, as did Massachusetts until 2000, but the only jurisdictions that don’t disenfranchise people in prison today are Maine, Vermont, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Some still retain carveouts for small segments of the prison population, such as Tennessee’s exemption for people convicted more than 44 years ago.
People serving prison sentences aren’t permitted to keep their government ID with them. Some may still have driver’s licenses that haven’t expired, but the only photo ID cards they can physically have in their possession are issued by the department of corrections. While it’s difficult to argue these do not constitute state-issued ID, they’re rarely if ever considered a valid form of government identification.
Question 1 stipulates that Maine’s secretary of state must provide free photo ID cards to prospective voters who do not have a driver’s license, and that people can be exempted from the requirement if they object to being photographed for religious reasons
MDOC and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) have reportedly expressed intentions to continue allowing people in state custody to vote if the measure is passed. But it’s unlikely that this would mean providing them with free photo ID cards; that would require a pretty serious overhaul of MDOC policy.
However, Question 1 also notes that when mailing a request for an absentee ballot, applicants could “include a copy of their photo ID or provide their driver’s license or nondriver ID card number.” (Nondriver ID cards are exactly what they sound like: They serve as proof of identity in all the same situations as a driver’s license, they just don’t authorize you to drive.)
Even if they never had a driver’s license before prison, people in custody are still eligible to register for a nondriver ID card. Though they won’t get the physical card itself, they are permitted to know the number. But getting it means more work for them, and in many cases probably more work for staff, who may not be willing or able to prioritize that kind of thing.
As in the free world, having the right to vote is not the same as having the means to vote.
As in the free world, having the right to vote is not the same as having the means to vote. Fewer than one in 10 people incarcerated in Maine and Vermont are estimated to have voted during the 2018 election. A survey by the Sentencing Project between August 2023 and January 2024 indicated that about half of eligible voters currently incarcerated in either state didn’t know how to vote. Many didn’t know they were still eligible at all. Staff are often even less familiar with the situation.
A small number of county jails hold in-person voter registration events for detainees, but neither Maine nor Vermont have formal processes in place to facilitate voting or even notify people in custody of their right to vote. Voting from prison often means tracking down the address of a town clerk, then mailing the request for an absentee ballot, receiving a ballot and then mailing it back in time while navigating the extremely slow and unreliable landscape of prison mail. It also means figuring out some way to access information about the candidates.
In Maine, voter turnout in prisons is driven by the NAACP prison branch, which was founded and is still led by people currently incarcerated. Maine State Prison members estimate they’ve registered more than 1,000 voters over the past two decades.
“The restriction itself is taking away our ability to register, to use absentee ballots,” Foster Bates, president of the NAACP’s Maine State Prison branch, told the Maine Monitor. “Try to force us while we’re incarcerated to get the right type of IDs, which we’re not allowed to have. [Voting] is the last thing that gives us some type of responsibility, some type of accountability to our life to have a say in what goes on.”
Question 1 lead petitioner Alex Titcomb, cofounder of the conservative political action committee The Dinner Table, told the Maine Monitor he wasn’t aware the measure could have implications for people in MDOC custody.
“That’s news to me,” he said.
Image (cropped) of veterans pod at Maine State Prison via Maine Department of Corrections/YouTube
