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Portland will reject approximately 650 municipal ballots that were returned before the City Council approved the school budget, and send new absentee ballots back to voters, a spokesperson said Friday.

The news comes after the Portland Press Herald asked about the city’s absentee voting process as it relates to state law, which requires clerks to reject all absentee ballots received before the school district budget is finalized.

In Portland, as in many other communities, there is an overlap between when absentee voting begins and when the school budget is actually approved by the local government.

Absentee voting started May 11, but the City Council did not take its final vote on the budget until Monday night, May 18, seven days later. State statute says absentee ballots may not be counted or processed by a clerk unless “received on the day after the conclusion of the regional school unit budget meeting” and that ballot envelopes received before that point “must be marked ‘rejected’ by the municipal clerk.”

Portland put out a news release on May 7, telling voters the City Council would not take its final vote until the 18th and that they “may choose to vote in advance” or take their ballot home and return it after the vote.

In an email Wednesday asking about whether Portland rejects ballots returned early, City Clerk Abbey Lombard said the language in the statute about regional school unit budget meetings “does not reference a City Council vote.” (Some school districts in Maine made up of multiple towns are classified as Regional School Units, while districts comprised of a single city or town, like Portland’s, are called Municipal School Units.)

However, the Maine Department of Education told a reporter Thursday that the statute refers to the final budget meeting of the local legislative body and applies to all school districts, regardless of how they’re organized.

In response to a follow-up question, city spokesperson Jessica Grondin said Friday that the city erred in allowing voters to return ballots before the final council vote. Portland will now reject all ballots turned in before Tuesday of this week, about 650, and will send all of those voters new absentee ballots to fill out and return, Grondin said.

The separate state ballots, where voters decide on gubernatorial and congressional candidates, are unaffected.

“In the past we had included a notice with absentee ballots that let voters know not to submit their ballots until after the final vote on the school budget is taken,” Grondin said. “Unfortunately, we did not include that notice this year, but plan to do so in the future.”

Grondin said Portland did reject early-returned ballots until 2021, when a long-time clerk retired. After the Press Herald asked about the process, she said, the city did some research and realized that practice did not transfer when a new clerk took over. The current clerk, Lombard, started in the role just last month.