Voter registration is overseen by the Registrar of Voters. Elections are run by the Town Clerk. Those two offices are usually held by the same people, and anyone in the clerks’ office can answer questions about voter registration.
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How do I register to vote?
If you are registering to vote in Maine for the first time, you will need to provide proof of identity (including a Maine driver’s license number if you have one, or the last four digits of your Social Security Number if you don’t) and proof of Blue Hill residence.
If you are transferring your voter registration from another town in Maine, you will need to provide proof of Blue Hill residence, but your proof of identity will already be on file.
Because we only have one voting district, if you are moving within Blue Hill or updating your mailing address, name, or political party, we do not require proof of residence or identity.
To register to vote in Blue Hill, you must be a US citizen, have your legal residence in Blue Hill, and be at least 17 years old. If you are a Uniformed Service or Overseas (UOCAVA) Voter, you will need to follow the instructions on this webpage.
In office: We have a stack of voter registration cards in our office that you can fill out and hand in on the spot. Please be sure to bring your proof of identity and/or residence as required.
At the polls: On election day, the Registrar of Voters will have a table set up to make last-minute adjustments to the voter rolls. Please be sure to bring your proof of identity and/or residence as required. This is not the case at an open Town Meeting – if you are not already registered at your proper address, you will not be able to vote at the open Town Meeting.
Online: You may use this online portal to register or update your registration. The portal will pull BMV records to confirm your identity, so please make sure that your driver’s license is up to date.
At the BMV: While updating your driver’s license with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, you may be offered the opportunity to register to vote simultaneously.
By mail: You may print out and mail in this voter registration form. Please be sure to enclose your proof of identity and/or residence as required.
At a registration drive: Voter advocacy groups sometimes host voter registration drives that are not associated with the Town. They might mail you a blank voter registration form or set up a physical booth with green voter registration cards. As long as they come with any required proof of identity and/or residence, we are happy to accept those applications as well.
How do I get an absentee ballot?
Absentee ballots are typically made available 30 days before a secret ballot election and cease to be available around five days before it. There are no absentee ballots for open Town Meetings.
All absentee ballots must be received by clerks’ office by close of polls to count; they may be dropped off during business hours or at the polls, mailed in, or dropped in the secure drop box by the side door of the Town Hall (marked “Official Ballot DropBox”). All ballots must be returned sealed in the envelopes with which they were issued, and the flap of the envelope must be signed by the voter.
If multiple elections are being conducted simultaneously and you are not a UOCAVA voter, using any one method will cause all applicable ballots to be sent to you. If you are a UOCAVA voter, you must use the online portal to get your state/federal ballot(s) and call the clerks’ office to get your municipal ballot (if both are applicable); using one will not automatically cause the other to be sent to you.
Request your ballot online: You may use this portal to request and track your state/federal absentee ballot. If there is no state/federal election, the portal will not work, and you must use another method listed below.
Request your ballot by phone: You may call the clerks’ office to request a ballot be mailed to you. With this method, we must speak directly to the voter requesting their own ballot; you cannot request a family member’s ballot by phone, and you cannot have someone pick it up from the office.
Request your ballot in person: You may come into the office and fill out a short request form. Using this method, you may also pick up immediate family members’ ballots.
Vote early in the presence of the clerk: You may come into the office and request to vote early. You will not need to fill out a request form as long as the ballot does not leave our office. We will have a small voting booth set up for your privacy.
What should I expect at the polls?
Secret ballot elections typically use the Gordon Emerson Auditorium (upstairs in the Town Hall) as their polling place. You may enter by the stairs through the front door or by elevator through the side door. Once inside, you will join the line to check in
There will be two people at the check-in table, but they have two different jobs; proceed to the clerk with the binder in front of them. You will state your last name, first name, and residence address (not PO Box) to the check-in clerk. In most cases, you will not need to show your ID. If the information you provide matches your voter registration, the check-in clerk will tell the other clerk to provide you will your ballot(s). If the election is a primary and you are unenrolled in a political party, you will be able to choose your ballot.
If the information you provide does not match your voter registration, or if you are not registered to vote in Blue Hill at all, the check-in clerk will send you to the Registrar of Voters’ table instead. The Registrar will have you fill out an updated voter registration card and show proof of ID/residency as required (see “How do I register to vote?”), then provide you with a Certificate of Registration to take back to the check-in table (you may cut the line).
If you are already registered to vote, but you did not show your proof of ID/residency at the time, you will also be sent to the Registrar’s table. There, we will give you the opportunity to show the required documentation and vote as normal, or, if you don’t have it, you will be directed to the warden/moderator to vote a challenged ballot.
Once you have your ballot(s), you may proceed into the voting area. We will have 11 standard voting booths and one wheelchair-accessible voting booth for you to choose from. If it is a state/federal election, we will also have an ExpressVote machine set up, which allows sight-impaired voters to mark their ballot independently. If you would like to use that machine, please ask the clerk who hands you the ballot to help you set it up. This machine will not be available for municipal ballots; if you require help marking your municipal ballot, you may bring your own aide or ask an election worker to help you. Other than aides (or minors), nobody else may accompany you to your voting booth, and voters may not communicate with each other once inside the guardrails. If there are multiple contests on the ballot, you do not need to mark all of them, and leaving some questions blank will not prevent the rest of your ballot from being counted. If you have any questions, you may ask an election official, though we will not be able to tell you anything about the contents of the ballot.
Once you have finished voting your ballot, you may leave the voting area from the far side. State/federal ballots (including ExpressVote cards) will go into a tabulator, and municipal ballots will go into a ballot box. An election clerk will be on hand to help guide you and provide you with your “I Voted” sticker. Once you have finished voting, please leave the Auditorium as quickly as possible. If you came in with a group, you may reconnect with them downstairs.
What is a Town Meeting?
The Town of Blue Hill is ultimately governed by its “legislative body” – all citizens registered to vote in Blue Hill. The legislative body acts through Town Meetings called for the purpose of voting on one or more articles in a warrant.
The Annual Town Meeting is held on the first Friday and following Saturday in April. Friday begins with the election of the moderator, but primarily consists of a secret ballot election, including the races for municipal officials (Select, School, and Planning Boards) and one or more referendum articles. The results are tallied on Friday night and announced on Saturday at the open Town Meeting.
The majority of warrant articles, most of which concern the municipal budget or ordinances, are debated, amended, and voted upon at the open Town Meeting, and the results directly affect real estate taxes, which are then committed in July. Please note that, if you wish to participate in an open Town Meeting, your voter registration must be up-to-date in advance; you will not be able to register day-of.
Throughout the year, the need may arise to appropriate further funds or enact amendments to ordinances. In such cases, the Select Board may call a Special Town Meeting, which will generally consist of either a secret ballot or an open meeting, but rarely both. When possible, the Board tends to schedule them alongside state/federal elections, so that voters coming for one may vote both ballots at the same time. Warrants for Town Meetings are required to be posted at least seven days in advance of the event; to make sure that you know about them as soon as they are posted, subscribe to the daily town news digest in the right-hand box at the bottom of this website.
Read Maine Municipal Association’s Citizen’s Guide to Town Meetings for more information. Some state/federal ballots use ranked-choice voting; to learn more about it, please visit this webpage.
When do State and Federal elections take place?
Congressional elections are held every two years (those ending with even numbers). Presidential and gubernatorial elections are each held every four years on an alternating basis, so that every congressional election will also have a race for either President or Governor. These general elections are held in November, typically with their Primaries held the preceding June.
State referendum elections occur as needed, often in November, but may include odd years.
How can I help conduct elections?
Thank you for your interest! If you would like to serve as a poll worker, please email the Town Clerk to be added to their contact list. The clerks’ office will reach out to everyone on that list about a month before any given election with a sign-up form. In order to serve, you must be 18 or older, a US citizen, a Maine resident, and registered to vote in Hancock County. We also offer a short training session for new volunteers (and returning ones who would like a refresher) before each election.