Worcester Investigating Candidate's Ballot Drop Box Tampering Claim

WORCESTER, MA — The Worcester City Clerk and the Board of Election Commissioners have opened an investigation into a local Republican candidate's claim that he witnessed several people possibly tampering with a ballot drop box outside a city fire station.

Paul Fullen, a Worcester firefighter who's running for the 17th Worcester state House seat, made the claim during a debate Monday with opponent state Rep. David LeBoeuf. After a question about voter integrity, Fullen relayed a story about seeing people collecting ballots from a box outside the fire department headquarters along Grove Street.

According to Fullen, the men in a pickup truck appeared at the station and emptied ballots into what looked like a garbage bag, and then threw them in the bed of the truck. Fullen also said he confronted the men.

"I said to him, 'You're not going to throw any of those away, are you?' He said, 'It depends on who they're for.' So there you have it," Fullen said, noting that he had witnesses to the incident. "True story. I'm not joking. Not joking."

"If that's the case, I hope you reported that to the city clerk's office and the secretary of state and got the license plate number and took a report." LeBoeuf responded.

Asked about the claim Friday, Worcester City Clerk Niko Vangjeli said he and Board of Election Commissioners Chair Kimberly Vanderspek have since interviewed Fullen as part of a formal investigation. Fullen told them the incident happened in 2020, but never reported it to either city or state election officials. Vangjeli said Fullen did not offer any other specific details about the incident.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth's office also said it had not heard any complaints about drop boxes in Worcester.

"The Elections Division has received no complaints of this nature regarding Worcester ballots, and no complaints generally from this candidate. It is our understanding that the city of Worcester had also not previously received any such complaints or information regarding this alleged incident," spokeswoman Debra O'Malley said Friday.

Worcester Patch called and emailed Fullen and two members of his campaign Friday, but they did not immediately respond. We will update this story if we hear back.

Fullen's claim comes as election integrity in the U.S. is under scrutiny following former president Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

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More than 100 lawsuits have already been filed ahead of the Nov. 8 elections. The legal challenges, largely by Republicans, target rules for mail-in voting, early voting, voter access, voting machines, voting registration, the counting of mismarked absentee ballots and access for partisan poll watchers.

And election workers have increasingly been subjected to abuse and threats of violence. Voter intimidation cases are on the rise, and there is growing concern among election officials and law enforcement about overly aggressive poll watchers or people pretending to be poll watchers intimidating voters.

Vangjeli said that he has not received any other complaints about the integrity of ballot drop boxes in Worcester. Prior to the pandemic, Massachusetts voters almost exclusively went to the polls to vote. A new voting reform law passed by state lawmakers over the summer has enshrined vote-by-mail as an alternative, and any registered voter can now request a ballot through the mail. States like Oregon, Washington and Colorado have been conducting elections by mail for decades.

In Worcester, ballot drop boxes are located at City Hall and at every fire station, offering 24/7 monitoring. According to Vangjeli, city clerk staff collect ballots from drop boxes in special pouches and use marked municipal vehicles.

"We also record how many ballots have been picked up from each fire station. Once the ballots are picked up from the drop boxes they are brought back to the election office where they are scanned into the state voter registration system and then stored in a locked vault until it’s time to count them," he said.

As an extra layer of security, voters can visit the Secretary of State's website to track mailed ballots.

The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Tuesday at 5 p.m. Ballots can be placed in the regular mail, dropped in a drop box or delivered to a city or town clerk's office. Mail-in ballots cannot be dropped off at polling sites on Election Day, and must be handed in before polls close that day.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report