BERKELEY — Berkeley resident Scott Wheeler was looking through recycling bins for empty egg cartons when he made a startling discovery. He saw 96 voter information guides for the November election that had been dumped in the bin in stacks. Wheeler says he lugged them back to his nearby apartment, then called Berkeley Police, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

“I gathered up the bindings as well because I imagined it would be very important for any investigator to see that this was not a random occurrence and that these things hadn’t been read,” Wheeler said.

Because of Wheeler’s Oct 12 discovery, a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service is under federal investigation for allegedly dumping the election materials, according to Glenn San Jose, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General.

If found guilty of delaying the delivery of the mail, the postal worker could face up to five years in prison.

San Jose said the agency could not comment on whether there was any indication of voter fraud since it is an open investigation.

“Our investigation is trying to get down to the motivation of why he did what he did,” San Jose said. “We have communicated the preliminary information to the U.S Attorney’s office, however we still need to cross our t’s and dot our i’s.”

He said the agents quickly determined that all of the voter information guides that somehow wound up in a recycling bin instead of voters’ mailboxes belonged to one letter carrier’s route.

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis said his office mailed out new voter information guides to those affected residents on Oct. 13, a day after Wheeler contacted the agency.

“I’ve been the registrar for four years and this is the first time that this has happened,” Dupuis said. “Everything indicates that this was an isolated incident.”

Wheeler insists it’s a sign of bigger problems. A week before he found the voter guides, he said, he discovered he had been mistakenly removed from the voting rolls because of a postal service error.