Honorable Shenna Bellows
Maine's 50th Secretary of State
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows is Maine’s 50th Secretary of State and first female Secretary of State.
Secretary Bellows is a member of the National Association of Secretaries of State where she serves as a member of the Elections Committee, Business Services Committee and the Cybersecurity Committee. She serves on the national Executive Committee of the Election Infrastructure – Information and Analysis Center, which she chaired from 2024-2025. In Maine, Secretary Bellows serves on the Board of InforME and on the State of Maine Cybersecurity Advisory Council. She is a member of the Board of Visitors for the University of Maine at Augusta, where she worked as Executive Director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine from 2018 to 2020.
Secretary Bellows previously served two terms in the Maine Senate from 2016-2020, during which she served as Senate Chair of the Labor and Housing Committee and on the Judiciary Committee. From 2005 to 2013, Secretary Bellows was Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine. She was a member of the first Right to Know Advisory Committee and the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition. She served on the Executive Committee of the 2009 and 2012 ballot campaigns to pass marriage equality in Maine and co-chaired a successful 2011 statewide ballot campaign to restore same-day voter registration. She was an original member of the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting.
Secretary Bellows grew up in Hancock and is a graduate of Ellsworth High School. She holds a B.A. in International Politics and Economics from Middlebury College. She volunteered with the Peace Corps in Panama and AmeriCorps VISTA in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also a graduate of the Emerge Maine program, the Institute for Civic Leadership in Portland, and the Yale Campaign School for Women. She lives in Manchester with her husband.
Historical List of Secretaries of State, 1820-present - Provided by the Law and Legislative Reference Library.