Last Sunday, I thought of spending at least a part of the weekend to vote. I unpacked the ballots, read the booklet, contemplated the choices to make ... and, since I was planning to vote early by making a deposit to the ballot box, I looked at the envelope too. Once in the past, I made a mistake while filling in the envelope, and I wanted to make it right this time on the first attempt.
The envelope had circle hole through it, which I thought was there for the purpose of indicating whether the envelope has something in it. When I folded the ballots and inserted them in the envelope to check how things fit, I noticed that "Trump" choice from the ballot showed up right in that hole, and remained visible. It showed up the same way when I flipped the ballots, because the name and the hole both happened to be centered from both sides of the envelope. It caught my eye, and made me spend the rest of my weekend thinking if this is an issue worth talking about. I concluded that it does, and, with the hopes that the practice will be avoided for the benefit of all participants involved, I share my thoughts here.
This article refers to the state of California. I don't know if any other states' counties experience the same effect. From my brief online search of the voting envelopes' images, it appears that some version of the same envelope is used in other states too, yet that fact by itself does not mean that the peculiarity I am covering here is present elsewhere as well. I simply don't know how widespread it is. I do know that it is not universal.
It is safe to assume for each state that each county prints its own, at least slightly different, design of the ballots. This is a safe assumption, because the voter's packet includes local measures and the elections of county-specific representatives. Add to it the differences for some of the cities, or the districts whose zones are not necessarily aligned with the counties' borders, and you get even more diversity of the choices each voter gets with the ballots. Add also to the mix the additional packets the registered party member receives vs. an unaffiliated voter. In other words, "at least" on a county level, there are some differences in the voting packet design, and there might be several designs per county as well.
The exact level of variations does not matter much for the point of this article. What matters is that it makes the next assumption also very likely, since there are different sets of ballots ––that each particular set of ballots is ordered for print from a vendor together with its instruction page, the inserted envelope for the voter to send ballots back, and the outer envelope, in which the packet is mailed to the voter. Someone committee on the county level makes design decisions and sends its order to the printing company for the whole thing. Since the voting envelope is one of the parts inside the packet that is mailed to the voter, that committee also appears to be in charge for where to make that hole punched, to have a 2-hole design, or to punch it at all.
Ballots: when the voter receives the packet, its ballots are already folded in halves in the outside envelope, together with the instruction page and the envelope to send the marked ballots back. We concentrate here on the first ballot's first page (where the choice for the president's candidate is printed).
Envelopes: some of the counties' inserted envelopes have one or two holes in them. I don't have a survey of all California counties, but I've heard that at least one county's envelopes (Tehama) do not have a hole. Some counties have a 2-hole design (San Francisco and Los Angeles are the two I know of), and some have one (San Mateo and Contra Costa). California has 58 counties, so my sample's size of five is very small, but this is all I have at the moment.
What is the issue with a hole in the envelope? The issue is that one can see voter's choice (or absence thereof, which is just as informative in the universe of the choices voted on that are almost always binary) through that hole. It takes just a slight press on the envelope's border to see enough space near the name and the mark(ed) area next to it. This design (one hole with the candidate's name seen through it) was found in San Mateo and Contra Costa counties. Because of the center position of both the hole and of the name, two ways of inserting the ballot will get "Trump" to show through. The Los Angeles design is different, the presidential candidates are listed on the left, so only one way of inserting the ballot will show the name. San Francisco, although having two holes as well on the envelope, appears to not reveal the choices of the ballot through them.
Is it a new issue? No, the issue was raised before, most notably in 2021, during the voting on recalling Governor Newsom. The selected choice of whether or not to recall the governor was showing through the similar circular hole on a very similar, if not the same, voting envelope. Back then, the issue was reported by many, and dismissed as a hoax. I list here just a few links to many publications: (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5) and there are many more from where these came from. The articles debunked the myth and appeased the readers, explaining that the hole was to assist the counting and to help the vision-impaired voters for finding where to sign the envelope.
The explanations looked reasonable enough for me to stop thinking about it and move on. I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I have other things to do with my time. This article would never be written, if I hadn't noticed the pictures of the 2021 voting envelope. Like this, for example. I noticed that the hole was on the left side of the envelope. And now it is in the center (for the one-hole designs). In other words, the hole moves across the envelope's space and its appearance is not a fixed feature (i.e., if some scanning equipment had a sensor in that particular spot), but a result of someone's decision, where that hole should be placed at, and that decision varied for different elections (i.e. for different ballot designs). This smelled bad enough for me to dig a bit further.
Why there are holes in the envelope? I don't know. The response proposed in 2021 was that the holes are to help count the votes and to assist the visually impaired to know where to sign the envelope. This means that my own idea about the purpose of that hole was wrong, the processors' software apparently doesn't need to see through to determine if the turned-in envelope is empty.
As to the two proposed explanations for why there is a hole, the help with the counting doesn't sound as a strong argument, because, in California, the individual ballots are traceable by their voters through the app, accessible by scanning a barcode on the instruction page, which means all ballots that make it to the ballot boxes are accessible for quick counting by being scanned.
As to the help with finding the spot for signing the envelope, it would only explain the presence of two holes, but not a single hole. First, especially in the case of that one hole being punched in equal distance from both sides of the envelope, how would it indicate where the signature's field is? Second, per CCR § 20991(b)(5), the voter can sign anywhere on the envelope and it still shall be considered valid: "b. A voter's ballot shall be considered a valid ballot, if the: ... 5. Voter does not sign the vote-by-mail ballot identification envelope in the appropriate space, but the signature does appear elsewhere on the identification envelope and compares with the signature(s) in the voter’s registration record." (My emphasis.)
As a final point to "debunk the debunking," I envision that other options are available for the indicating the area on the envelope: (1) it could be a half-circle cut-out on the border of the envelope, (2) it could be the same present solution with the holes, but placed away from the any visible choices, (3) there could be an insert envelope (as done before in Pennsylvania), or at least (4) a warning on the instruction page that came with the ballots, to instruct to fold the ballots in such way as to avoid the choices to show in the holes.
In short, there is no reasonable explanation for a hole to be present on the voting envelope, for it to migrate from one spot on the envelope to another, and for the counties that have the holes on their envelopes not to address this issue since 2021 and thus avoid its repetition in 2024.
Couldn't we just fold the ballot the other way before putting it into the envelope? Of course we can. But the election is the numbers' game, where majority of voters will fold the ballots the way they arrived (folded the way they were already, first page on the outside of the stack), and insert them with the folding side going in first. Surely, some people will put them in a random order, or insert by putting the pages' ends first, but I am not expecting that those measures will be taken up by the majority of the voters. I didn't think of do it this way, and I would not have even noticed anything wrong with my folding and inserting choices, have I not to seen "Trump" squarely showing up in the hole, once I inserted the ballots.
How could this affect the voting outcomes? Assuming that all post-office and polling stations' supervisors, employees, and volunteers, as well as all vote-counters, will act honestly and without any fault, the only danger is whether the envelope will make it to the mailbox or ballot box. Those who are not going to vote in person, or to see the delivery of the envelope to the box, those who are impaired in any way, not just visually, which prevents them from voting in person, those who are not technically adept to scan barcodes and check the ballot-tracking app to ensure delivery of their ballots––these are the groups whose votes might be at risk.
Imagine a senior-care facility for example. Several advance-age voters, or those of limited mobility, will fill their ballots, seal the envelopes, and ask someone to drop the ballots for them. If the designated person is unscrupulous, and that person's choices differ from the ones who trusted their votes being delivered through his/her help, all it would take is a quick peak to go through the envelopes, so that those who match courier's views make it to the box unopened, while the other ones would be simply "lost" and never make it to the box. This danger is bias-blind, and it would present itself when the delegating voters are of one opinion, while the delegate is of the opposite one. But it is still the danger of missing the votes.
It is a big deal that the name shows through? It seems to be a deal at least worth noting. On the one hand, it is not going to be decisive in a general election of the President, for several reasons (California is not a "battleground" state, not everyone votes by sending in their ballots in an envelope, not every county has the "hole" issue, and the individual ballots are traceable by their voters through the app).
On the other hand, this flaw in the envelope's design similarly affects voting on the local issues, the ones which might be decided by just a few percents of the total votes counted. The local items on the ballot get affected thanks to the predominantly binary choices we are facing. With some exceptions, there are some issues and candidates sponsored by Democrats and some by Republicans. Taking it more broadly, some are leaning liberal and some conservative. And of course, mid-road voters may end up voting a "mix bag" of choices from either of the sponsoring sides. But if one sees on the top of the ballots' stack that the voter voted for Trump, or left that choice unmarked, there is a predictable chance of that voter's preferences down the ballot too. A tossed away ballot may not tip the scale on the nationwide issues, but may be just the one sorely missed on a city- or countywide measure.
While it's too late to do much about it this time around, except warning those you know to refold the ballots the way their choices will not be visible, I hope that this design flaw with the envelopes will be changed for the next round of elections. I think this needs to be addressed, even if this hole thing (pun intended) was an innocent coincidence, even though relocating the hole from where it was in 2021 to where it is in 2024 suggests that some design decision is a more likely reason, than just a random result that happened twice in a row. Still, even assuming this was an unintended fluke, let's have those holes plugged. If we don't want conspiracy theories to propagate about our elections, we shouldn't create situations susceptible to such interpretations.
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