Mail Ballots Were Found in an Amazon Box in Maine. Some Suspect a Political Dirty Trick.
AUGUSTA, MAINE — With weeks to go before Mainers decide on a ballot initiative that could radically restrict voting in the state, the GOP backers of the measure seemed to have received a gift from heaven.
Late last month, a woman told a conservative news outlet that she had received an Amazon delivery at her home, filled with bags of rice, paper plates, and a toy lightsaber — all items she had ordered. What she hadn’t ordered, she said, were the 250 absentee ballots for the upcoming referendum, divided into five packages of 50 ballots each, that were also in the box.
The referendum, known as Voter ID for ME, would require a photo ID for both in-person and mail voting, limit the number of ballot dropboxes to one per town, eliminate the two busiest days of mail-in voting, and make voters re-apply for a mail ballot each election, among other steps. Taken together, voting advocates say, its provisions could significantly restrict ballot access in the Pine Tree State.
It doesn’t matter that no one could vote fraudulently with the ballots found in the box, because absentee ballots aren’t accepted without a signed and sealed security envelope, printed by a different vendor and shipped separately from the ballots*. Republicans have nonetheless seized on the discovery to claim that Maine’s elections are dangerously insecure and to call for a federal investigation, which is now underway. They’ve also used it to attack the competence of the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D), a candidate for governor next year.
“At a time when Maine people are being asked to weigh in on whether to adopt the same commonsense Voter ID standards used in 36 other states, this shocking breach exposes how vulnerable our elections really are,” House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R) said in a news release.
“We call on Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to explain how this happened and to cooperate fully with federal investigators,” added Faulkingham’s number 2, Rep. Katrina Smith. “Anything less is unacceptable.”
But as the story has unfolded, some opponents of the ballot measure are asking whether there’s more to it than meets the eye — and whether the episode was a political dirty trick, engineered from the start to generate fear about vulnerabilities in Maine’s election system and boost support for the ballot measure. Just weeks before voters consider a measure that would dramatically tighten Maine’s election system, they note, a nationally-publicized incident seems to perfectly exemplify the need for stricter rules — timing that may appear too good to be true.
Amazon has said in a statement that they’ve determined that the box shipped by UPS to the home in Newburgh, about 15 miles outside Bangor, contained only the items ordered from its facility.
“I think this whole story smells really bad,” Andy O’Brien, a former Maine Democratic legislator, said in an interview. “From what we know already, it’s pretty clear that the ballots were put in the box after the delivery. Whoever did it must have been so brainwashed by the election fraud conspiracy theory they truly believed they could get away with it, because they believe the system is open to fraud.”
Bellows appears to be asking similar questions. At an Oct. 6 press conference, she offered assurances that the state’s voting system was secure, and suggested that the goal might have been to undermine confidence in elections.
“To any bad actors involved, you will be caught and you will be punished,” Bellows said. “You obviously didn’t understand the checks and balances in Maine elections if you thought you could stop absentee voting or shake our faith in fair and free elections.”
Bellows didn’t offer details about her office’s investigation, but said it involves help from the Maine attorney general’s office, the state police, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
But a close look at how news of the ballots emerged, and how the story subsequently unfolded, only raises more questions.
When the woman received the ballots Sept. 30 at her home in Newburgh, she took them to her local town clerk, according to a statement from state Sen. David Haggan (R).
Bellows has since said that the city of Ellsworth, 40 miles north, reported 250 ballots missing that day*.
The woman also contacted Haggan, who, along with the clerk, took photos of the box and its contents, Haggan said in his statement. Then, Haggan said he contacted Steve Robinson, the editor of the Maine Wire, a right-wing news site that’s a project of the Maine Policy Institute, which has received funding from the major conservative donor Leonard Leo.
Robinson reached out to Bellows for comment at 1:31a.m. Oct. 1 — which was how her office learned of the breach, Bellows said at her press conference.
Only at 8 a.m. that morning did the Newburgh clerk notify Bellows’ office, Bellows added. Clerks are required by Maine law to notify the secretary of state’s office about any discrepancies in ballots.
The Maine Wire published an exclusive about the ballots that day, including photos. The story quoted the woman who received the delivery, who appeared to have remarkably well-formed views on election policies — views which happened to line up with the key argument for the ballot measure.
“I am greatly concerned for our state and its voting requirements,” the woman said. (The woman, a registered Republican according to state voter records viewed by Democracy Docket, has remained anonymous. But a picture of the Amazon box posted by the Maine Wire, and since removed, showed her name on it. Democracy Docket is not naming her.)
But even before the Maine Wire published its story, the state GOP, as well as a Republican candidate for governor, had issued statements on social media calling for a federal investigation.
Those were followed by a torrent of similar demands from Dinner Table Action, the GOP-tied PAC sponsoring the ballot initiative, as well as Paul LePage, the former governor who’s running for Congress, and numerous Republican candidates in the 2026 governor’s race.
Most also used the story to take aim at the competence of Bellows.
GOP legislative leaders sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel asking for a federal investigation. Bellows has confirmed the FBI is assisting with the state investigation
Sen. Susan Collins (R) also has weighed in, calling for Bellows to step aside from probing the breach, in favor of an independent investigation.
None of Robinson, Haggan, and State Representative Laurel Libby, the co-founder of Dinner Table Action and a likely Republican candidate for governor in 2026, responded to a request for comment from Democracy Docket.
Bellows told Democracy Docket she’s confident her office’s investigation will provide answers.
A former director of the ACLU in Maine, Bellows has been a lightning rod for GOP ire, both at home and nationally. In 2023, she ruled that Donald Trump was ineligible to be on the ballot in the state Republican primary for president because of his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned that ruling.
And Bellows is resisting a push by the U.S. Justice Department to collect Maine’s voter information, a demand she says is at odds with the Constitution. When it first asked for the records, Bellows told DOJ to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.”
Bellows also has clashed with supporters of the ballot measure. Earlier this year, she rejected the proposed wording of the measure, which supporters wanted to focus on the ID requirement. Bellows required more emphasis on how it would restrict absentee and dropbox voting. A lawsuit by the measure’s backers was rejected by the state Supreme Court.
*Correction: This story originally reported that two separate security envelopes are required for mail ballots to be counted. In fact, it’s only one.
*Correction: This story originally reported that Bellows said Ellsworth reported the ballots missing on Oct. 1. In fact, she said the city reported them missing on Sept. 30.