As I reflect on the election, I am holding a mix of complicated emotions: gratitude and pride, exhaustion and determination — and hope. I offer these thoughts as an invitation to start a conversation, working out our next steps together.
Gratitude and Pride
The League of Women Voters observed the election at 115 polling places in Maine – we were in all sixteen counties, helping to flag and resolve scattered issues but, overall, noting enthusiastic, patient voters and well-run processes. Maine voters can trust their elections, and we offer huge thanks and appreciation to the election officials and poll workers who put themselves forward to serve their communities. You can read more about our work here.
Election Day also culminated months of work registering voters, supporting youth, disability, low-income, and immigrant leaders, researching local elections, distributing voter guides, and answering voter questions to our hotline. It was an enormous team effort, and everyone who participated and supported this work should feel proud! We learned first-hand that Maine people are committed to the practice of democracy – even when we lose – but that defending democracy is a never-ending prospect – vigilance and commitment are required of each new generation, and we at the League of Women Voters are ready to deliver for this, our time.
Determination and Commitment
Defending our democracy takes place at every level — local, state, and federal. As a state-based organization, our top priority in 2025 is defeating a radical voter suppression referendum that is currently qualifying for the ballot in the guise of a photo ID requirement, and enshrining voter protections through a new Maine Voting Rights Act. These will be hard but winnable campaigns; with your support, we’ll be ready for that work.
As believers in our democracy, it is undeniably challenging to watch our country choose leaders who have called for the punishment of their political enemies and the dismantling of our freedoms – whose rhetoric will not align with our member positions or our organization’s values. In the days and months ahead, we must especially stand by our immigrant, refugee, and LGBTQ+ friends who were targeted by hateful rhetoric and now have good reason to fear that rhetoric turning into reality.
The Urgency of Dreams
We are living in a present that was built by people who thought big and thought long-term. We look to our forerunners in the suffrage and civil rights movements, and admire their persistence and their bold imagination.
Even in times of fear and despair, we must find ways to carve out space to imagine a different future. What does the world we want look like? How can we bring it closer day by day? Dreaming of a better future is not escapism from the struggles of the moment. Hope is itself an urgent and important discipline for us to practice.
Democracy Maine organizations are pushing forward with our proactive agenda in this next state legislature, including bringing Ranked Choice Voting to the governor’s race and working with youth leaders to lower the voting age to 16. We are also thinking about intergenerational organizing, studying fresh ideas like citizen assemblies and proportional representation, and working for the revitalization of rural civic life. We believe in a multiracial democracy that honors individual rights and the care we owe one another. We don’t have all the answers yet. But we all have pieces of answers, and we know that we can figure it out together.
Onward,
Anna Kellar
Executive Director, LWVME