Secretary of State briefs committee on missing absentee‑ballots investigation, post‑election audits and voter‑list maintenance

Secretary of State Bellows told the Joint Standing Committee on Veterans and Legal Affairs on Jan. 5 that an October 2025 chain‑of‑custody incident involving absentee ballots was investigated by her office and turned over to the Attorney General and law enforcement.

Bellows described the case in which five sealed packets of absentee ballots — totaling about 250 ballots — were missing from a delivery to Ellsworth and later recovered when a Newburgh resident returned a box of ballots found in an Amazon delivery container. She said the Elections Division isolated the cause to UPS handling, detectives secured evidence and the office coordinated with the Attorney General, Maine State Police, the FBI and the U.S. Postal Service. "As soon as we became aware of the situation, I immediately directed my office's division of enforcement services to investigate," Bellows said. She told the committee that ballots found outside the established chain of custody cannot be used in a count.

Bellows also presented the election transparency report required under Title 21‑A §610, which cataloged complaints and post‑election audits from the 2025 referendum election. The report documented categories of complaints (political activity at polling places, petition‑gatherer disputes and occasional misinformation). The office piloted risk‑limiting audits for close state legislative races and consulted with the Federal Election Assistance Commission and outside stakeholders; the pilot met the 5% risk‑limit threshold and officials plan to extend audits to 2026 races. "They successfully developed a risk limiting audit process that follows sound and recognized statistical...principles," the report said.

Committee members pressed Bellows and Deputy Secretary Julie Flynn on whether the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) requires the state to issue local municipal ballots to overseas voters. Deputy Secretary Flynn clarified: "The federal law only applies to federal elections," and Maine currently consolidates federal and state contests on a single federal/state ballot but does not place municipal contests on that same ballot because municipal election administration falls under municipal home‑rule authority.

The Secretary described steps the elections office follows for absentee ballots — printing by a contracted vendor, sealed shipment with tracking, municipal signatures on receipt, separate shipping of return envelopes and online ballot tracking — and said the system of checks and balances prevented any extraneous ballots from entering the count. On the October incident, she said, "we isolated the challenge to UPS. Something went wrong in the UPS deliveries of the ballots and the absentee ballot return envelopes." She declined to offer an investigatory timeline from the Attorney General’s office, saying that the committee could request one.

Bellows also described accessibility complaints (two voters reported issues — one about an ExpressVote setup and one about polling‑place accessibility) that will prompt site visits and additional training for wardens and clerks. The office urged municipalities to ensure accessible voting equipment is set up and said it provides demonstrations and training with disability‑rights groups.

The Secretary summarized Central Voter Registration system data as of Jan. 1, 2026: 1,038,603 active voters and 763 inactive voters, with routine maintenance actions in 2025 including cancellations for death, duplicates and inactivity totaling roughly 217,216 records. She said automatic voter registration produced 18,041 transactions in 2025 and highlighted the online absentee ballot tracking portal.

Committee chairs said they will draft a letter to the Attorney General asking for a timeline for the ongoing absentee‑ballot investigation and for public updates where appropriate. The committee scheduled follow‑up briefings and asked staff to circulate prior working‑group reports on political activity at the polls.