A box of about 500 Massachusetts mail-in ballot envelopes without a return or sender’s address recently landed on the counter at Derry Plumbing and Heating, according to owner David Benedict.
The envelopes, used for mailing Massachusetts absentee ballots, had the abbreviation “MA” or the word Massachusetts typed into the address box designated for the “city or Town Clerk or Election Commissioners.”
Though Benedict says the box was delivered by a postal worker, Debra O’Malley, spokesperson for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, said they would have been shipped through a private courier from Adam Graphic in North Attleboro, the state’s printing vendor.
She believes the labels likely came off the box that was shipped to the wrong address.
Regardless, she said, the delivery wouldn’t have had any impact on the outcome of the election in Massachusetts.
“I will note that this box of envelopes contains just that — envelopes,” O’Malley said. “(They) are used for overseas and military voters to return their ballots to their local election office. These envelopes do not contain any ballots and could not be used by anyone but an overseas or military voter returning the ballot they requested.”
But Benedict, a vocal Trump supporter who provided pictures of the puzzling delivery to The Eagle-Tribune, said the situation left him concerned about the integrity of mail-in voting in the Bay State.
“It (the counts) are going to be off and by the time they find out it’s going to be too late,” Benedict said. “And it proves Donald Trump’s point that they can’t handle all these mail-in votes and there’s proof right here. They already screwed it up; they dumped a whole box of them off at my office.”
Maureen Marion, corporate communications manager for the U.S. Postal Service in New England, said the box doesn’t seem to have been mailed if there wasn’t a return or sender address.
“I don’t see any evidence that it was in the mail,” Marion said. “I don’t see postage. I don’t see an address. I don’t have enough evidence in front of me to say that I handled that.”
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