If it smells fishy, it’s probably a fish
Dear Editor:
There have been several letters about the 250 ballots reportedly found in a package from Amazon shipped to a home in Newburgh, Maine.
I’m a technical writer. The basic rule is:before publishing, check the data. Let’s do some checking.
Amazon has considerable security in its warehouses. Amazon has determined that the box shipped by UPS contained only the items ordered from its facility, i.e., no ballots.
At the same time the ballots were ‘found’, the city of Ellsworth reported 250 ballots missing. This may, of course, be a coincidence, but it is certainly a rather remarkable one.
Let’s assume that the ballots did find their way into that Amazon package. Could they have affected the outcome of an election?
The answer is ‘No’. Absentee ballots aren’t accepted without a signed and sealed security envelope. These envelopes were not with the ballots.
The reported ballot incident is being beaten to death by Republicans eager to secure a ‘Yes’ vote on Referendum Question 1. If passed, this willseverely restrict absentee voting in Maine. It is a blatant act of voter suppression being supported by ‘evidence’ that even if true has no bearing on election outcomes.
If I relied on this kind of ‘evidence’, my technical writing reputation would be garbage.
Maine consistently ranks at the top of the U.S. voter participation leagues with zero evidence of voter fraud. Let’s keep it that way by convincingly voting ‘No’ on Referendum 1.
Nigel Calder
Newcastle
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