The secretary of state’s office said it changed the company that delivers voting materials to towns across Maine after hundreds of absentee ballots ended up at a private home.
In late-September, 250 absentee ballots that were supposed to be delivered by UPS to Ellsworth City Hall; instead, they ended up in an Amazon box shipped to a woman in the Penobscot County town of Newburgh. Law enforcement in Maine are still investigating. And some Republican state officials have urged federal investigators to get involved.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows declined to comment more Wednesday as the investigation proceeds. But she said her office decided to use a different carrier, Vital Delivery, rather than UPS for the last part of the delivery process because of the “interruption of the chain of custody” with the Ellsworth ballots.
All ballots have since been delivered to municipalities across the state, Bellows said.
“We trust that law enforcement will get to the bottom of what happened and that the public will have answers,” Bellows said. “And we trust that all of our partners will collaborate in that investigation. However, out of an abundance of caution, it seemed prudent to switch carriers given that we don’t yet have answers about exactly what happened.”
Maine voters across the state will decide on two referendums during the Nov. 4 elections: one deals with voter ID and absentee balloting, and the other proposes a red flag gun law.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.