Two months after a woman said she found 250 blank Maine ballots inside an Amazon box that was shipped to her home, state officials said the investigation remains active.

“The investigation is continuing, and it is our understanding that progress is being made,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said in a written statement Monday.

“While we are as eager as anyone for the investigation to be concluded and to get to the bottom of how these ballots ended up outside of the chain of custody, we also understand that investigations are by necessity slow and meticulous. We appreciate all the hard work and efforts investigators are putting towards getting answers.”

The secretary of state’s office is leading the investigation, which also involves the United States Postal Service, Maine State Police, Office of the Maine Attorney General and the FBI.

The woman turned the ballots in to the Newburgh town office on Sept. 30. That same day, Ellsworth officials said a recent shipment of absentee ballots was missing the same number of ballots.

The incident prompted calls for stronger election security at the same time as Maine was preparing to vote on Question 1, a referendum that would have required voters to show photo identification and would have placed new restrictions on absentee voting. The measure was soundly defeated 64% to 36%.

Bellows has said Maine elections are secure, and suggested at an October news conference that “bad actors” may have tampered with the ballots. She said there are safeguards in place to ensure that only ballots associated with legal registered voters and valid absentee ballot requests are counted, meaning there was little chance the misplaced ballots would have been counted.

In addition to the misplaced ballots, Bellows also told lawmakers in a letter Oct. 17 that her office’s elections division was notified around the same time by a “third-party out of state organization that they believed they were in possession of Maine absentee return envelopes.”

She said she directed law enforcement to expand their investigation to also include the delivery of absentee ballot return envelopes.