Newly released investigative records reveal that Maine authorities never determined how hundreds of official absentee ballot envelopes were redirected to a Maryland nonprofit, after the attorney general’s office declined to subpoena UPS tracking and surveillance records.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Maine election investigators closed a case involving 500 missing absentee ballot return envelopes without determining why nearly all of them were delivered to a Maryland nonprofit with reported ties to organizations funded by billionaire George Soros, according to state investigative documents released through a public records request.
The records obtained by The Maine Wire and published Oct. 26 show that investigators recovered 498 of the missing envelopes from the Center for Civic Design, an election-related nonprofit headquartered at a residential property in Cambridge, Maryland.
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Although investigators sought additional shipping information from UPS, the company said it would require a subpoena to release tracking details and surveillance footage. Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office subsequently determined that it lacked sufficient grounds to issue one.
“The AG’s Office determined there was not enough information to issue a subpoena for this case,” Secretary of State Detective Ray Goodspeed wrote in an investigative report.
The decision left authorities unable to establish how the shipment was redirected from its intended destination in Augusta, Maine, to an organization with which the state said it had no business relationship.
The incident began Sept. 10, 2025, when Adam Graphic Corporation of North Attleboro, Massachusetts, shipped 62 boxes containing 500 absentee ballot return envelopes each to Maine’s elections office.
The state received 61 boxes, leaving one package of 500 envelopes unaccounted for. Election officials reported the shipment missing the following day.
For more than three weeks, investigators were unable to locate the package.
On Oct. 3, an employee of the Center for Civic Design contacted Maine election officials to report that the organization had received a package containing what appeared to be official state absentee ballot envelopes.
“I am contacting you to report that we have erroneously received a box of blank return mail envelopes that appear to be for Maine via UPS,” the employee wrote.
The employee stated that the package had arrived around Sept. 13 and estimated that it contained approximately 100 envelopes. The materials reportedly remained inside the box before being placed in secure storage.
Investigators subsequently recovered the shipment and determined that it contained 498 of the original 500 envelopes.
The records do not explain what happened to the remaining two envelopes or why the nonprofit employee initially estimated that the package contained approximately 100.
The documents also revealed an unexplained change in the shipment’s destination.
According to Detective James Gordon’s report, the original tracking information showed that the package had entered the delivery process before the tracking history changed to indicate only that a shipping label had been created.
Investigators later discovered that the package delivered to Maryland carried a label identifying its sender as UPS Overgoods in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
UPS Overgoods is associated with the company’s procedures for handling packages that cannot be delivered through normal channels.
The destination listed on the new label was the Center for Civic Design.
Adam Graphic Corporation told investigators that it had no commercial relationship with the nonprofit and had not authorized a shipment to that address.
“The Center for Civic Design is not a customer of Adam Graphic Corporation, so they could not have shipped a package to them,” Gordon wrote, recounting information provided by the printer.
The circumstances surrounding the relabeling remained unexplained.
On Dec. 4, 2025, an investigator from the attorney general’s office requested additional tracking information and any available surveillance footage showing the package while it was in UPS custody.
On Feb. 6, 2026, UPS informed investigators that a subpoena would be necessary to obtain the requested records.
The attorney general’s office declined to pursue one.
Goodspeed’s report indicated that investigators had not identified a sufficient legal basis under Maine criminal statutes to compel the records.
Without additional shipping information or evidence of a criminal violation, investigators concluded that further progress was unlikely.
“Without the cooperation of UPS or a violation of Maine Criminal Statutes to justify formal legal requests, further leads or information are unlikely to develop,” Goodspeed wrote.
He added that the reason the envelopes were redirected to Maryland “remains speculative” and stated that the investigation would be closed pending new information.
An April 2, 2026, email from Derek Dinsmore, director of the Enforcement Services Division, confirmed the closure.
“The envelope case is closed, and that did not go to the AG’s Office,” Dinsmore wrote, adding that prosecutors “did not want to look at it.”
The newly released documents also provide information about communications between the nonprofit and Maine election officials.
Center for Civic Design has worked on election administration and ballot-design issues and has reported connections to organizations supported by Soros-linked funding networks. Those relationships have drawn scrutiny from critics who question the nonprofit’s involvement in election policy.
However, the investigative records do not establish that Soros directed, knew about or had any involvement in the misdirected shipment. They also do not establish that the nonprofit intentionally obtained the envelopes or used them improperly.
Maine officials acknowledged that the nonprofit was not an authorized vendor.
“We do not work with the Center for Civic Design as a vendor for anything,” Kate McBrien, chief deputy secretary of state and chief of staff to Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, wrote in an Oct. 4, 2025, email copied to Bellows and Frey.
Despite the absence of a contractual relationship, records obtained by The Maine Wire show that representatives associated with the nonprofit had communicated with Maine election officials about voting procedures and election administration.
Those communications included discussions involving ranked-choice voting materials and election-related resources.
In January 2025, Center for Civic Design representative Emma Werowinski invited a Maine elections employee to participate in an online discussion group concerning implementation of ranked-choice voting.
Other communications included recommendations that Maine election officials consult the organization on election administration issues.
On July 28, 2026, consultant Jocelyn Bucaro contacted Bellows and McBrien to share an election-related resource and request a meeting.
The records establish that such communications occurred but do not connect them to the missing envelope shipment.
The episode was one of two ballot-related delivery incidents that raised concerns about Maine’s election procedures before the November 2025 statewide referendum.
In a separate case, a Newburgh resident discovered approximately 250 official election ballots inside an Amazon package delivered to her home.
That discovery prompted public scrutiny of the state’s ballot delivery procedures and questions about how election materials could be mixed with unrelated commercial shipments.
Bellows initially pledged to investigate the incidents and identify anyone responsible for improperly handling the materials.
Her office subsequently stopped using UPS for election ballot deliveries.
On Oct. 14, 2025, Elections Director Heidi Peckham notified municipalities that official election ballots would instead be delivered through Vital Delivery.
“Official (Election Day) ballots are beginning to ship. Please note that your ballots will be delivered by a different courier, Vital Delivery,” Peckham wrote.
McBrien also informed UPS that the state’s willingness to resume using the company would depend on receiving satisfactory explanations about the incidents.
“Our office remains hopeful that we can work with UPS again for the next election cycle, but that will be dependent on getting answers — wherever they may lead — in the current investigation, so we can ensure that it never happens again,” she wrote.
UPS previously attributed the separate Newburgh incident to an unintentional package-handling error and maintained that it had cooperated with investigators.
Bellows subsequently criticized the company’s performance.
“UPS fell down on the job, and that’s why the State of Maine does not use them for ballot delivery anymore,” she said.
The Maine Wire obtained the nonprofit’s identity through a Freedom of Access Act request on Sept. 28, 2026, after the secretary of state’s office had previously declined to identify the recipient publicly.
Additional investigative reports and 47 pages of correspondence were released Oct. 23, revealing that the envelope investigation had been closed months earlier without a public announcement.
The records raise unresolved questions about how an official shipment was relabeled, why it was directed to a nonprofit outside Maine and whether the two envelopes that were not recovered were lost or removed.
The materials involved were blank absentee ballot return envelopes, not completed ballots or evidence of votes being cast. Their unauthorized delivery nevertheless raised election-security and chain-of-custody concerns because official voting materials had left their intended distribution system.
No criminal charges have been announced in connection with the shipment, and the available investigative records do not establish election fraud or intentional interference with voting.
The central question remains unanswered: how did a box of official Maine election envelopes, originally destined for the secretary of state’s office, end up addressed to an unrelated organization hundreds of miles away?
With the investigation closed and no subpoena issued to obtain additional UPS records, state authorities have not established what caused the shipment to be redirected.
Goodspeed’s report leaves open the possibility of reopening the investigation if new information emerges. For now, 498 envelopes have been recovered, two remain unaccounted for, and the circumstances surrounding the delivery remain unresolved.
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