SF Voters: Did Your Midterm Ballot Arrive Torn? Here’s What to Do
Counties began sending midterm election ballots to every registered Bay Area voter this week — but some San Franciscans are reporting their ballots have arrived in envelopes that are torn or damaged.
In a public advisory, posted Wednesday to the San Francisco Department of Elections website, the agency’s director John Arntz told voters that “tears in the outer mailing envelopes” wouldn’t affect their ability to use their ballots to vote in the Nov. 3 election, “as long as all four ballot cards and the ballot return envelope are intact.”
However, some voters in the city are reporting that the ballot cards inside their envelopes have also arrived damaged. One of them, KQED News reporter Sydney Johnson, said she and her partner had received ballots that were torn on both the outer envelopes, and her internal return envelope was also ripped.
If you’re concerned your San Francisco ballot materials have also been damaged, jump to what you should do now.
What happened to these ballots?
Arntz attributed the damage to issues at the United States Postal Service, “which indicated that the tears occurred as some envelopes moved through its processing equipment.”
In an email to KQED, USPS spokesperson Kristina Uppal said that the damage to some San Francisco ballot envelopes was due to their “thickness,” meaning a “small number of envelopes may have experienced damage during machine processing.”
“Upon observing the issue, USPS switched to manual processing for the remaining vote-by-mail packets,” Arntz said.
“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and remain fully committed to delivering every election mail piece safely and on time,” Uppal said.
Election officials have sent out more than 500,000 vote-by-mail ballots to San Francisco voters, although it’s not yet clear just how many have been affected.
If you’re a San Francisco voter who’s worried about your ballot, here’s what to do
First, check your ballot envelope and the contents inside
Arntz said that if you spot any tearing in your San Francisco ballot envelope, you should (carefully) open the envelope to check it contains the following:
- All four ballot cards
- A ballot return envelope
- An insert with voting instructions
“If all four ballot cards and the ballot return envelope are intact, voters can mark their ballots and return them using the ballot return envelope provided,” Arntz said.
Elsewhere, Arntz has described the outer envelope as “just a package to give the ballot to people.” In other words, once your ballot has arrived, you don’t actually use that outer envelope again in any of the voting process — which is why its damage won’t stop you from voting.
Was anything damaged inside? Get a new ballot
If the contents of your ballot show any sign of damage, you can request a new ballot from the San Francisco Department of Elections.
People across all Bay Area counties request new ballots all the time, often because they’ve made a mistake (or just spilled coffee on them), so there’s already a process to request yours. You can do that by:
- Calling the SF Department of Elections at 415-558-6100
- Emailing them at [email protected]
- Logging into the SF Elections Voter Portal
- Going to the SF Department of Elections in person during opening hours (located in Room 48 at San Francisco City Hall, open Mon-Fri 8 a.m—5 p.m., closed weekends and on Oct. 12)
You can also take your damaged ballot to your assigned polling place on Election Day, Nov. 3, and vote in person at any time until 8 p.m.
Should I be worried about mail-in voting this election season?
The issues with some San Francisco ballots arrive on the heels of President Donald Trump’s multiple attacks on voting by mail this year — a system which he has claimed, without evidence, is rife with fraud.
The Trump administration’s efforts to limit voting by mail include an executive order attempting to give USPS the role of deciding who receives mail ballots, to a push for Congress to require photo identification at the polls.
And while these moves have failed so far, and are not in place this election season, USPS has also made some new changes to its mail collection process.
These changes have resulted in slower service that particularly affects voters in rural areas, who will have their mail picked up later — with big consequences for ballots, which must be postmarked by Election Day itself in order to be counted. Read more about these changes to USPS services.
In the last two statewide elections, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Attorney General Rob Bonta urged voters planning to use USPS to mail in their ballots at least a week before Election Day, to account for those USPS changes — and to get a hand-stamped postmark from an employee inside a post office, if mailing their ballot on Election Day itself is their only option, rather than simply dropping it in a USPS collection box.
Some election officials are steering voters away from using USPS entirely, including Sonoma County’s registrar of voters Evelyn Mendez, who told KQED that the county was “not really encouraging people to use the USPS to get their ballot here.”
Instead, Mendez said, voters should use secure county collection boxes, which are now open 24/7 through 8 p.m. on Election Day and bypass USPS entirely, making sure ballots reach the county’s election offices directly.
Read more about how to ensure your mail-in ballot is counted this election season.
KQED’s Izzy Bloom contributed to this report.