A Newburgh resident expecting an Amazon delivery of rice, paper plates and a toy lightsaber instead opened a box to find 250 state election ballots.
The discovery raised alarms about election security, leading the Maine Republican Party Chairman to call for a federal criminal investigation as the state is mere weeks from deciding on whether it will join 36 other states in requiring some form of Vote ID.
The package arrived Tuesday looking beat up and re-taped, as if tampered with. Inside, along with household items, were bundles of ballots packaged in tamper-evident packs of 50 — the same format used for official shipments to local clerks. Election officials who reviewed photographs confirmed the documents appear to be authentic 2025 ballots.
The resident, stunned by the find, immediately turned the ballots over to the town office.
“I am greatly concerned for our state and its voting requirements,” she said.
“When I opened it, there were 250 official State of Maine referendum ballots inside my box. Thank goodness I am an honest citizen and immediately reached out to my town clerk and took the ballots to the town for safekeeping.”
The misdelivery comes just 35 days before Maine’s Nov. 4 election, which features a high-stakes referendum on requiring voter identification.
The initiative, Question One, has divided state politics, with Democrats warning it could shrink their vote totals and Republicans insisting it would bolster election integrity.
Thirty-six other U.S. states, as well as virtually every nation in the European Union, have some form of Voter ID law.
Yet Maine Democratic Party Chairman Charlie Dingman has frequently downplayed the need for election integrity measures and fretted that if the “Yes on One” effort succeeds, Democrats could lose as many as 13,000 votes in future statewide elections.
In a May 30 text message to voters, for example, Dingman said that if Maine adopted Voter ID requirements similar to those of 36 other states that “it could result in a loss of 13,000 Democratic” votes being counted in subsequent elections. (Dingman did not provide an explanation as to how the proposed Voter ID would prevent any legal U.S. citizen from voting in the election, nor did he elucidate how the Maine Democrats arrived at the 13,000 figure.)
If the Maine Democratic Party chairman is correct, though, then those 13,000 voters who will mysteriously disappear from the election tallies if IDs are required could reshape control of the state and even the U.S. Congress.
With the stakes so high, the epic blunder in Newburgh will only cast more doubt on the legitimacy of Maine’s elections, as well as the conduct of arch-partisan Shenna Bellows, a lifelong leftist activist who is currently seeking the Democratic nomination to run for governor in 2026.
Maine Republican Party Chairman Jim Deyermond called the Newburgh ballot discovery “beyond the realm of accidental.”
“The U.S. Department of Justice needs to assume jurisdiction over this matter immediately,” Deyermond said.
“This incident should be treated as a potential crime and a crime scene,” said Deyermond, a retired longtime Massachusetts State Trooper.
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Under state law, the Secretary of State’s Office designs, approves, and oversees distribution of ballots. Ballots must be printed on secure paper, shipped in sealed units, and delivered directly to municipal offices under strict chain-of-custody rules.
The images provided to the Maine Wire by the resident who received the shipment shows part of the text of the second ballot measure on gun restrictions that will also appear on the Nov. 4 ballot — language that matches the Secretary of State’s final ballot wording. That detail, along with the tamper-evident packaging, strongly suggests the ballots are authentic.
But so far, neither the Secretary of State’s office, nor the long time ballot contractor, the Omaha, Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software, has provided an explanation as to how seemingly every law, regulation, and rule concerning ballot shipment and chain-of-custody could have been broken to place those ballots in an Amazon shipment.
The Secretary of State’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries about the incident. Bellows, a Democrat who has faced criticism for her partisan handling of election matters, has refused calls for her to resign from her role as election chief even as she pursues the Democratic nomination in the 2026 gubernatorial race.
The Newburgh resident who received the ballots said she immediately recognized the impropriety of having received the ballots and delivered them to her her local town office. Video evidence was taken as the ballots were placed in the town safe under the observation of Newburgh’s deputy town clerk.
But questions linger: Was this honest Newburgh resident the only person in Maine who received a mysterious bonus delivery in her Amazon package? How did those ballots wind up delivered to an unauthorized location? Who put them there? How did that person gain access to the ballots in the first place? And what assurances do Mainers have that hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of ballots aren’t currently floating around unsecured locations waiting to be filled out and deposited in unmonitored ballot drop boxes throughout the state?
Compounding these concerns is Secretary Bellows’ unabashed partisanship, her attempt to rig the 2024 presidential election by removing President Donald Trump from Maine’s presidential ballot, and her ongoing refusal to cooperate with a federal probe by the U.S. Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into Maine’s voting rolls.
Bellows has continued to stymie the federal civil rights investigation even as she admitted publicly on a left-wing podcast that she believes there are non-citizens illegally registered to vote in Maine.
The citizen who received the package was so concerned with the mistaken delivery of genuine election ballots that she immediately contacted the Newburgh town office and delivered the ballots into their custody. She said a video recording was made of the ballots being placed into the town of Newburgh safe under the observation of the town’s deputy clerk, Rebecca Campbell.
Neither Campbell nor the Newburgh Town Manager, Katie Flores, were immediately available to respond to inquiries about the ballot shipment error and the process for handling the suspect election materials. Under state law, those ballots must be discarded.
Yet the question remains: If 250 ballots were mistakenly shipped to a private resident, how many other ballots have been distributed to unauthorized persons across the state, and will those ballots end up being cast in various locations throughout the state?
According to the Newburgh resident who now owns a lightsaber and several months’ worth of white rice, Campbell said she would alert “state election officials” on Wednesday. Meaning Secretary of State Shenna Bellows will likely be tapped for damage control, if she hasn’t been already.
