Did Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows get caught committing election fraud after a box of 250 ballots was found in her office in 2026? No, that's not true: The controversy over a missing box of 250 ballots in Maine took place in 2025 for the election that year. The box was found in Maryland, not in the secretary of state's office. The incident was investigated by authorities and the case closed without any charges.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @GOP_is_Gutless account on X on Nov. 9, 2026. It read:
Maine's Secretary of State just got busted for election fraud. Authorities found a box of 250 ballots in her office that she or her staff had personally submitted -- then pulled from the official count. Fraud at every level. In every state. This time it's Maine. #ElectionFraud #Maine #ElectionIntegrity
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @GOP_is_Gutless on X.)
This is what the post on X looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @GOP_is_Gutless on X.)
The video in the post was originally published on the Facebook account of The Maine Wire (archived here) on Oct. 4, 2025, with the caption "The Maine Wire speaks with gubernatorial candidates from both parties about the Bellows Ballot Scandal and the importance of election integrity."
The man at the start of the video making the claims about the ballots is Bobby Charles, a Republican who ran for Maine governor in 2026. He lost the election (archived here) to Hannah Pingree on Nov. 3, 2026.
The Bellows Ballot Scandal refers to election mistakes in 2025. According to the Maine Wire (archived here), there were two incidents in 2025: one regarding a box of absentee ballots and one regarding a box of absentee ballot affidavit envelopes:
The investigation stemmed from a series of election blunders in Oct. 2025. As first exposed by The Robinson Report, a woman in Newburgh found 250 absentee ballots in an Amazon package delivered to her house. Then a political non-profit in the DC area disclosed that it has received a box of Maine absentee ballot affidavit envelopes.
The box of 250 absentee ballots discovered in a woman's Amazon package in Maine were for the Nov. 4, 2025, election in Maine, not the 2026 election.
On Oct. 26, 2026, The Robinson Report posted an article on Substack (archived here) that said the Maine Attorney General's office closed the case pending additional information:
According to the documents obtained by The Robinson Report, the investigation into the envelopes ended in the spring -- with no announcement.
In March 2026, investigators wrote that their ability to determine why the envelopes went to Maryland 'remains speculative,' and the case was closed pending additional information.
Lead Stories contacted the Attorney General office and will update the story when a response is received.
