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.

Election officials and lawmakers must confront an uncomfortable truth: The safeguards meant to protect our democracy aren’t working. Anyone arguing against stronger voter ID laws should look to Newburgh. How can citizens trust the vote when ballots appear as shipping mistakes?

This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a test of whether Americans still believe their votes matter. A democracy depends on a transparent, verifiable process — from printing to counting. When that chain breaks, confidence collapses.

Newburgh should be a wake-up call. Every ballot must be tracked, every voter verified, every election beyond reproach. Reassurances and press conferences won’t cut it. Citizens deserve a voting system that’s airtight, accountable, and secure. Anything less insults the republic.

Commonsense reforms aren’t complicated. Require a government-issued photo ID to vote — the same standard used to board a plane, buy a beer, or enter a federal building. For mail-in ballots, require proof of identity both when requesting and returning a ballot. Without that, the system leaks from every seam.

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Photo by Moor Studio via Getty Images

When ballots get rerouted into cardboard boxes unnoticed, the integrity of democracy itself comes into question. It signals a culture that prizes convenience over vigilance, treating ballots like junk mail instead of sacred instruments of self-government.

Democracy doesn’t collapse in secret; it erodes in daylight while people look away. That’s why reform must be bold, not bureaucratic. States need top-to-bottom reviews of how ballots are printed, stored, distributed, and tracked — and consequences for failures.

If democracy is worth defending, ballots are worth protecting. Anything less, and we’ve already surrendered what makes the vote sacred.