Back in 2025, a statewide referendum election was held in Maine that focused on two questions that they labeled as "citizen initiatives."

Question 1 was: “Do you want to change Maine election laws to eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, end ongoing absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, ban prepaid postage on absentee ballot return envelopes, limit the number of drop boxes, require voters to show certain photo ID before voting, and make other changes to our elections?”

Question 2 was: “Do you want to allow courts to temporarily prohibit a person from having dangerous weapons if law enforcement, family, or household members show that the person poses a significant danger of causing physical injury to themselves or others?”

Question 1 failed, with 64 percent of those who voted opposing it, while Question 2 was approved by 63 percent.

But if Maine's voters had known more about a couple of incidents that allegedly happened just one month prior involving absentee ballots and envelopes, perhaps more of them would have been on board with the first referendum.

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As Maine Wire editor-in-chief Steve Robinson reported then and now, the incidents involved one in which 250 authentic absentee ballots were allegedly sent to a woman in Newburgh, Maine, in an Amazon package along with some items she had actually ordered from Amazon. The other centered around "a box of Maine absentee ballot affidavit envelopes" that Robinson says were sent to "a political non-profit in the DC area":

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows initially promised to investigate both election security breaches until a “bad actor” responsible for the mishandled voting materials was identified. However, Bellows has never announced the conclusion of either investigation.

[...]

The closest Bellows came to answering lingering questions over the ballot security issue was to blame UPS. In October 2025, Bellows’ office moved Election Day ballot deliveries from UPS to a different courier, Vital Delivery.

“UPS fell down on the job, and that’s why the State of Maine does not use them for ballot delivery anymore,” Bellows said, speaking about the Newburgh ballots a year later.

According to the documents obtained by The Robinson Report, the investigation into the envelopes ended in the spring — with no announcement.

Through a Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) request, Robinson was able to find out in late September 2026 that the political non-profit the 498 ballot envelopes were sent to in September 2025 was the Center for Civic Design (CCD), which he noted was "a Soros-funded NGO":

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has finally responded to a Feb. 13 Freedom of Access Act request — 228 days after the simple inquiry was submitted — revealing that a left-wing NGO funded by George Soros and Arabella Advisers somehow obtained Maine election materials in advance of the 2025 election.

[...]

The Center for Civic Design is an election-design nonprofit with longstanding connections to Maine’s election administration, direct ties to Sec. Bellows and Democratic-aligned organizations.

The box was one of 62 shipped in early September 2025 from North Attleboro, Massachusetts-based Adam Graphic Corp. "The elections office received 61," Robinson learned, with the one being reported missing on September 11, the day after it was shipped. Robinson reported that it wasn't known where the missing box was until October 3, 2025, "when a CCD employee whose name the state redacted emailed the elections bureau."

Strangely, no one is able to explain how the one box that went to CCD had its address on it and a return address of UPS Overgoods in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Adam Graphic says CCD is not a client.

As for the 250 ballots that were sent to the woman in Maine, Robinson shared that a UPS spokesperson claimed, “This was due to an unintentional error on the part of our package handlers." 

Below, Robinson tries to unravel it all and observes that the delayed response from state officials and the Maryland case being marked closed "only deepens the mystery" as to how this could have happened: