Shenna Bellows urges returning absentee ballots ASAP to avoid mail delays

By Billy Kobin, Bangor Daily News Staff

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and election officials in other states are urging voters to return absentee ballots as soon as possible ahead of the Nov. 5 election after discussing on-time mail concerns with the leader of the U.S. Postal Service.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had a video call last week with Bellows, a Democrat, and other secretaries of state to discuss issues surrounding mail and the election, and Postal Service officials will have another meeting with Bellows’ office this week, Bellows spokesperson Emily Cook said Monday, when early in-person voting began in the state.

The stakes are clear. Officials expect high turnout during the presidential election year, and Maine had the nation’s second-highest share of voters participate in the 2020 election. The state recommends allowing seven to 10 days to receive a ballot if a voter requests one less than a month before the election. Maine allows no-excuse absentee voting, and new voters or those who moved towns can also register online by Oct. 15 or at their polling place on Election Day.

While Cook did not get into more specifics of last week’s call with DeJoy, the message from election officials to voters remains simple: Return your ballot sooner rather than later. 

If voters still have not mailed back an absentee ballot by the week before the Nov. 5 election, then taking it to a ballot or handing it in to a clerk in person is “a safe bet,” Cook said.

As of Friday, Mainers had requested more than 106,000 absentee ballots, with 5,145 returned so far, per data from Bellows’ office. By this point in 2022, Mainers had requested about 78,600 absentee ballot requests and returned about 4,300, per state data.

Election officials from both major parties have recommended voters return ballots early while airing concerns about the Postal Service’s ability to handle ballots in a timely manner. Delayed deliveries and mishandled ballots also affected primaries this year in states such as Kansas.

Kennebunkport Town Clerk Tracey O’Roak, president of the Maine Town and City Clerks’ Association, which has about 850 members throughout the state, signed a letter that state and local election officials from around the U.S. sent to DeJoy last month to raise “serious questions” about processing facility operations, lost or delayed mail and training deficiencies affecting the Postal Service’s ability to deliver election mail “in a timely and accurate manner.”

DeJoy responded by acknowledging a reorganization had caused temporary problems but assured the bipartisan groups the Postal Service is ready to handle a flood of mail-in ballots. The Postal Service also found nearly 98 percent of ballots were returned to election officials within three days and 99.9 percent were delivered within seven days in 2020, when just over 69 million ballots were mailed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We engage in heroic efforts intended to beat the clock,” DeJoy told reporters last month.

It is not the first time the Postal Service has faced scrutiny under DeJoy, whom the Postal Service’s Board of Governors appointed to the top role in 2020 during former President Donald Trump’s administration. DeJoy, who founded a logistics company and had no prior Postal Service experience, had been a major donor to the Republican Party and Trump, who faces Vice President Kamala Harris in this year’s election.

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, zeroed in on DeJoy by introducing a bill on Monday co-sponsored by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, that would require the president, rather than the Postal Service’s Board of Governors, to appoint the postmaster general and limit the position to two five-year terms. 

Golden said his resolution was motivated by the Postal Service announcing in August it will lengthen delivery times by at least 24 hours for communities more than 50 miles from processing centers, such as Maine’s pair in Scarborough and Hampden.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, echoed Bellows’ recommendation on returning ballots sooner in a Monday interview. Unlike Maine, New Hampshire requires voters have a reason to vote absentee, such as being out of town on Election Day or physically disabled.

If they have time to go to their clerk’s office and request an absentee ballot, Scanlan also encouraged voters to “do that, fill it out on the spot and then hand it back.”