Lewiston, Maine has security cameras inside City Hall, where early voting has been running since October 13. The Maine Wire filed a public records request for the footage and got back about 140 hours of it.
On the tape, Somali-speaking "translators" walk voters to the booth. Then they lean in and put their hands on the ballots.
Maine's rules for interpreters are simple. A voter has to ask for help first; an interpreter can't walk up and offer it. Once asked, the interpreter can explain what's on the ballot. They aren't allowed to steer a voter's choices, approach someone who's already in the booth, or mark the ballot.
The Maine Wire says the footage shows more than 200 voters who didn't appear to speak English getting help or coaching. In some clips, it says, the "help" looks a lot like someone else filling in the ovals. Maine Wire reporter Jon Fetherston was there on October 20 and said he saw translators "talking to people and pointing at the ballots," and "a couple of people actually touching the ballots."
These translators weren't random volunteers. Many were tied to Lewiston's Somali NGO network. That includes Gateway Community Services, a nonprofit with a budget of about $5 million a year. Maine's own health department cut off its MaineCare payments last December over welfare fraud allegations, and Gateway has since shut down. Its founder is reportedly in Africa.
The Maine Wire says one woman can be seen in the footage directing both translators and voters. She is Safiya Khalid, a former Lewiston city councilor and Gateway staffer who now runs a group called the Community Organizing Alliance. Before early voting started, Khalid and other NGO figures posed for a photo with Hannah Pingree, the Democratic candidate for governor.
Once the videos spread, the city clerk started handing NGO staff a printout of the voting rules. That's an odd step if everyone already knew them. The clerk also told Fetherston that a warden had ordered one interpreter out of the voting area for approaching a voter who hadn't asked for help.
Lewiston's Democratic mayor, Carl Sheline, went after the cameras. He moved to restrict reporters from photographing and filming the voting area. The city's own CCTV, the cameras that caught all of this, kept running.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, also a Democrat, has focused on complaints about "intrusive filming, photography and harassment of voters." The Maine Wire reports she told activists on private Zoom calls that her office is investigating the Maine Wire.
The federal government is taking it more seriously. Andrew Benson, the U.S. Attorney for Maine, confirmed that his office is reviewing the footage. "We review all evidence concerning complaints of voter intimidation and election interference, including the video from Lewiston's early voting at City Hall," Benson said. "We will not tolerate threats to the integrity of our elections." The Justice Department is also sending federal monitors to Lewiston, Portland and South Portland today.
Democrats and their friends in the press already have their answer: these are people helping elderly immigrants get through a confusing ballot, and there's no proof anything was stuffed.
Translation is talking. An interpreter can explain every race on that ballot from behind the voter's shoulder without touching it. The ballot is the one thing in that room only the voter is supposed to handle. When the same group of NGO workers keeps reaching for it, voter after voter, that deserves more than a printout from the clerk.
Vice President JD Vance has spent the last month warning about this kind of fraud at his rallies. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican running for governor of Ohio, said last night that there's a coordinated effort to flood the polls and drown out legitimate votes.
Minnesota shows where this goes once Democrats decide it's fine. Under its "vouching" law, one registered voter can vouch for where other people live so they can register and vote the same day, with no ID. Journalists James O'Keefe and Cam Higby went in with a camera to show how easy it is. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a Democrat, charged them both with felonies. "Any attempt to disrupt or deceive our election workers will not be tolerated," she said.
In Minnesota they charged the people holding the cameras. In Lewiston, the mayor went after the cameras too. Either way, the people with their hands on other people's ballots haven't been charged.