Welcome to the ACLU of Maine's annual event, We the People: Democracy Depends on Us. This year, we celebrate those who fought to expand the right to vote. And we’re mobilizing, so that we do not lose this precious right to voter suppression efforts.

Please enjoy the program by viewing the video below.

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Learn more about the topics discussed during the event, and concrete actions you can take to support the right to vote.

Tribal Sovereignty

• Support the Wabanaki Alliance
• Since recording the annual event, it has become unlikely the Legislature will go into special session. This means LD 2094 will die without a vote. Nevertheless, you can reach out to your state officials and urge them to support tribal sovereignty and implement the recommendations of the Maine Indian Claims Task Force.
  • Contact Governor Janet Mills
    Janet T. Mills
    Governor of Maine
    1 State House Station
    Augusta, ME 04333
    E-mail: governor@maine.gov
     
  • Contact Attorney General Aaron Frey
    Aaron Frey
    Maine Attorney General
    6 State House Station
    Augusta, ME 04333

Vote in November

• Register to vote. Fill out and return your voter registration form. You can print the form at home, you can go to your town clerk's office and fill it out there, or ask your town clerk to mail it to you. Find your clerk's contact information here.
• Request your absentee ballot online or call your town clerk's office to have them mail it to you.
• Remember to return your absentee ballot early. You can mail it, or drop it off in-person with your town clerk, or drop it off in a secure dropbox (if your community has one).
• Tell your families and friends! Help them register to vote and request their absentee ballot. And give them a friendly nudge to return their absentee ballot early.

Support Voting Rights

• Tell your members of Congress to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
  • Contact Rep. Chellie Pingree
  • Contact Rep. Jared Golden
  • Contact Sen. Susan Collins
  • Contact Sen. Angus King  
• Phone bank with the ACLU of Maine! Email dsingaram@aclumaine.org to sign up, with the subject "Phone banking."
• Make a voting plan and help everyone you know make a voting plan.
• Learn what the ACLU is doing nationally to Let People Vote.

Featured Speakers & Performers

Sophia Lin Lakin

Sophia Lin Lakin is the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. Sophia has active cases protecting voting rights and combatting voter suppression across the country. She is currently litigating a number of cases to ensure that all voters are able to cast ballots safely during the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis, including in Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee. Sophia is a frequent commentator on voting rights issues, presenting at conferences and conducting voting rights trainings nationwide. She speaks regularly to both national and local media on a wide range of topics that touch on voting rights.

Before joining the ACLU, Sophia clerked for the Honorable Raymond J. Lohier, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Carol Bagley Amon of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Sophia received her J.D. from Stanford Law School. She also received her M.S. in Management Science & Engineering and B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University.

Krystal Williams

Krystal Williams is an attorney with Bernstein Shur, who focuses on public utility regulation and renewable energy development, and a board member of the ACLU of Maine. She is the founder of the Alpha Institute, which promotes representation and inclusion of people of color and other marginalized groups in Maine’s legal profession. Before practicing law, Krystal spent more than a decade at Deere & Company, a Fortune 500 company, holding senior program and management positions. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Krystal is an avid hiker who has thru-hiked all 2,190 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

She holds a J.D., cum laude, from University of Maine School of Law, an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and a B.A. in Mathematics and Psychology from Williams College.

Signature Soul

Signature Soul is the eclectic duo of Marco Soulo & Signature MiMi. Through their musically poetic embodiment, community-cultivating adventures and genuine passion for spreading love, Signature Soul intend to raise the collective consciousness one Soul at a time. They faciliate workshops, coach new and experienced creatives, and consult with groups and organizations. They believe in sustaining an interdependent network of artistic activists, free thinkers and community connectors, dedicated to making our world more creative and "peace-full."

JanaeSound

JanaeSound (BMI) harnesses an unforgettable voice that stirs the soul. The powerhouse rock singer hails from St. Louis, where she began cultivating her love of music at the tender age of nine through the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Known for her laser focus and unshakeable drive, FloRida tapped JanaeSound to open for him on NOW 96.3, NOW Night Out. Based in Portland, Maine, JanaeSound has performed at numerous festivals and venues in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Texas. In Maine, she has been featured in Maine Today, the Bangor Daily News, Old Port Magazine and Portland Magazine. Her music can be heard on WMPG, WHOM WCYY, WBLM , WCLZ and WHSN.

When the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, finally allowed women to vote, ACLU founder Crystal Eastman, an ardent suffragist, was not interested in a victory celebration. She wanted women to use their newly minted political power to promote true freedom and equality, regardless of sex. “Now We Can Begin,” she urged, in a still-renowned speech. 

But the adoption of the 19th Amendment did not actually enable all women to vote. Black women and other women of color still had to confront laws and practices designed to keep them from voting —despite the fact that the 15th Amendment, in 1870, had already prohibited the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. And today, 150 years after the 15th Amendment’s declaration of equal rights, racist voter suppression is still rampant.

It’s wonderful to celebrate the 19th Amendment’s centennial, but it’s not enough. We need to finish the job of the voting rights activists who fought for both the 15th and 19th Amendments.

Let People Vote

The Constitution says clearly that women and people of color have a legal right to vote. But theory is not practice. 

For many decades, the ACLU has been battling laws that outright disenfranchise some people — like people who are incarcerated and people with certain criminal convictions — or create insurmountable barriers for others, especially Black and Brown women and men, Native Americans, and people with disabilities. We’re currently working in 30 states to fight pernicious voter ID laws, illegal purges of voters from the voting rolls, and malicious limitations on voter registration, all of which tend to have an intentionally disproportionate and exclusionary impact on Black and Brown voters. 

Adding to this plague of voter suppression, COVID-19 is creating further barriers and unevenly affecting our electoral process.

COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease to which everyone is susceptible, and there is still no vaccine. Its symptoms vary — from the most severe to the least detectable — leaving many prospective voters anxious to use mail-in or drop-off ballots or at least be assured that conditions at their polling places will minimize their exposure to the virus.

No one should have to choose between their vote and their health, as voters in some states have already been forced to do. The Wisconsin state legislature, for example, refused to take the logical step of expanding absentee balloting for the state’s April election — despite the fact that a state-wide stay-at-home order was in effect. Determined voters waited in line for hours to vote in crowded polling places, especially in densely populated cities. In Milwaukee, only 5 of 180 polling places were open. In the days following the election, over 50 Milwaukee voters and poll workers tested positive for the virus. And turnout numbers from the city of Milwaukee showed a massive decrease, from over 167,000 voters in 2016 to just over 95,000 voters this year.

This is discriminatory voter suppression in a new guise. The population in Milwaukee is 40 percent Black, while the population of the state as a whole is 6 percent Black. Black and Brown communities are disproportionately impacted by the virus, and thus would have an additional reason to feel dissuaded from voting under the kind of conditions the Wisconsin legislature condoned. Wisconsin is a frightening harbinger of how unrepresentative the November election could be if we don’t act now to protect everyone’s right to vote.

Most states have agreed to make mail-in ballots and expanded early in-person options available to every voter, which could keep lines shorter and increase accessibility options for many. But some have not. It was only after extensive litigation that Alabama, for example, agreed to make mail-in-ballots available to all of their voters during the pandemic. Other states, like Texas, have persuaded their state courts to allow them to enforce in-person voting with only limited exceptions. 

Many states that do allow voting by mail nevertheless insist on maintaining requirements which, during a pandemic, can be daunting hurdles to voting from home, especially for people who live alone:  mandating that a mail-in ballot be signed by a live witness, or notarized, or accompanied by a specified kind of photo ID that could require an in-person trip to the DMV — or be hard to obtain if DMV offices are closed.

Requiring people to tolerate unequal levels of risk of infection in order to vote during a pandemic is a new, opportunistic form of the insidious voter suppression we’ve been battling all along.

What You Can Do

Crystal Eastman would be gratified to know that the ACLU has more than just begun: For 100 years, we’ve been honoring our founders through our work toward equality, now including ensuring that voting is safe, accessible, and inclusive in this perilous time. And now you can begin — or continue what you’ve already been doing, to realize the promise of both the 19thand 15th Amendments:    

• Ask your member of Congress to support mandating universal access to voting by mail and early voting, provide the necessary funds for states to implement these changes, and support the federal VoteSafe Act;
• Learn if you can vote by mail in your state and make a plan to vote;
• Work on voter registration or voter turnout initiatives; and
• Share information and action proposals with your social media and other communities.

And when you exercise your own right to vote, vote like your rights depend on it! They do.