Law enforcement officials in Maine are investigating reports that a woman in rural Penobscot County received a box in the mail containing hundreds of Maine election ballots.
The alleged incident occurred in Newburgh and reportedly involved 250 ballot sheets for the statewide referendum to be held next month. According to the conservative news outlet The Maine Wire, an unnamed woman discovered the ballots in a box from Amazon containing items she had ordered. The woman then brought the ballots to Newburgh's office after alerting the town clerk.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Wednesday evening that incident was under investigation.
“Safe and secure elections are my top priority," Bellows said in a statement. "As soon as we became aware of allegations of ballots being received outside of the appropriate chain of custody, I immediately initiated an investigation through my Secretary of State’s law enforcement division. Law enforcement is working diligently to determine who is responsible, and they will be held accountable. We will not stop until we have answers.”
Bellows' office did not make her available for an interview on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the Maine State Police said that their agency is not involved in the investigation.
But conservatives quickly seized on the alleged incident to attack Bellows — a Democratic candidate for governor next year — and to call for a federal inquiry. It's the latest Republican attack on Bellows, who has publicly refused to comply with demands to hand over complete, unredacted copies of Maine's voter rolls to the Trump administration as part of Department of Justice review of states' voter list maintenance. Elections officials in other states, both Democratic and Republican, have also refused to comply with similar DOJ requests.
The four top-ranking Republicans in the Maine Legislature referenced that history on Wednesday as they urged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI director Kash Patel.
"Given Secretary Bellows' continued refusal to comply with federal law and her complete lack of transparency, we request the Department of Justice immediately open an investigation into the security of Maine's elections," wrote Sens. Trey Stewart of Presque Isle and Mat Harrington of Sanford as well as Reps. Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor and Katrina Smith of Palermo.
The timing of the incident is also factoring into some of the campaign rhetoric surrounding this November's ballot questions.
Alex Titcomb, who is leading the Voter ID referendum on the ballot, also called on the DOJ to investigate and said Bellows should resign. Titcomb also said the incident illustrates the need for the photo ID and absentee balloting changes proposed in Question 1.
“This is a stunning breach of election security that no free state can tolerate,” Titcomb said in a statement. “Mainers deserve to know how many other ballots are unaccounted for, who is responsible, and whether our elections have already been compromised."
David Farmer, a spokesman for the Save Maine Absentee Voting Coalition that is leading the fight against Question 1, agreed that interfering with ballot delivery is a serious illegal act and that "those responsible should be held accountable."
"There is nothing in Question 1 that would address this incident, which is already against the law," Farmer said in a statement. "Question 1 is a clear attack on absentee voting. This entire situation, including the timing, is very sketchy, and it’s our hope that the authorities will quickly get to the bottom of it."
Maine consistently has one of the highest voter participation rates in the nation, although turnout for next month's election is expected to be low. That's because there are only two issues on the statewide ballot.
Question 1 would require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot and would make a series of changes to Maine's increasingly popular absentee voting process. Those changes include eliminating two days of absentee balloting, ending a program that allows senior citizens and disabled voters to automatically receive absentee ballots in the mail for each election, requiring bipartisan teams of election officials to retrieve absentee ballots and prohibiting towns from offering more than one ballot drop-box.
Question 2 would enact a so-called "red flag" gun law that would allow family or household members to petition a judge to force someone to temporarily surrender their guns if they pose a danger to themselves or others. Maine already has a "yellow flag" that allows police — but not family members — to initiate that process. But the current law also requires the individual to be evaluated by a medical or mental health professional before a court can order them to give up their guns.
