A woman voter in California posted a video on her Instagram account on Wednesday evening appearing to show that the return envelope for mail-in ballots in the California recall election could reveal a “yes” vote to anyone handling it.
Voting is already under way in the Sep. 14 recall election, during which California voters will decide whether Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will remain in office, or be replaced by one of 46 candidates, led by conservative talk show host Larry Elder.
Amy Rose Cox showed how two holes on the envelope, near the signature panel, could show that a voter had marked “yes” on the first question, which asks whether Newsom should be recalled and removed, depending on how the ballot is folded.
“You can see, if someone, from the outside of the mail-in ballot, you can see if somebody has voted ‘yes’ to recall Newsom,” she said. “This is very sketchy, and irresponsible in my opinion, but this is asking for fraud. So anybody that has access to this mail-in envelope can see who’s voted yes, toss it, do whatever they want to it.
“So, when you’re doing this, make sure that you line up your ballot on the inside of the envelope so that your vote is not visible,” she concluded.
With Newsom struggling in the polls, many Republicans fear that Democrats will cheat to keep him in office — a fear heightened by the fact that Newsom signed an extension of the state’s pandemic voting rules earlier this year, mandating that mail-in ballots be sent to every registered voter, rather than just voters who have requested them.
The state also allows “ballot harvesting,” in which people can turn in an unlimited number of ballots filled out by other people.
Procedures for printing ballots (or QR codes for ballots) at home in some circumstances have also generated concerns.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.