Process and Procedures

Ballots by Prime: Katherine T. Bennett in The Blaze

When election materials show up in Amazon boxes, the problem isn’t conspiracy — it’s incompetence. And incompetence destroys trust faster than fraud.

Katherine T. Bennett/October 29, 2025

The Blaze ran an opinion editorial written by Katherine T. Bennett, Director of ALEC’s Process & Procedures Task Force. In the piece, she underscores the urgent need to strengthen America’s election systems, pointing to a recent incident in Newburgh, Maine, as evidence of the vulnerabilities that exist in maintaining a secure chain of custody for ballots nationwide.

When 250 state ballots arrive in your Amazon order, faith in election security gets harder to defend. Yet that’s exactly what happened to a woman in Newburgh, Maine, who opened her package of household items to find five bundles of 50 official Maine referendum ballots.

Adding to the irony, the ballots were for Question 1 — a measure asking voters whether to tighten absentee ballot rules and require photo ID. The woman did the right thing and called authorities. But what if she hadn’t?

How can citizens trust the vote when ballots appear as shipping mistakes?

Now under investigation, the bizarre mix-up raises urgent questions. Who had access to the ballots? Were chain-of-custody rules violated? How many more ballots might be “out for delivery”?

For years, skeptics of election fraud have claimed concerns about ballot integrity are overblown. Yet events like this prove the opposite: The system is riddled with vulnerabilities. When official ballots wind up in an Amazon box, the process is beyond merely “flawed” — it’s broken.

Read the full op-ed here.

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