{"id":488470,"date":"2026-10-07T22:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488470\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T22:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T22:00:18","slug":"why-is-your-san-francisco-ballot-arriving-in-a-ripped-envelope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/488470\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is your San Francisco ballot arriving in a ripped envelope?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scads of San Franciscans have posted photos on the internet<\/a> of their torn or crumpled ballot envelopes, which the Department of Elections this month sent out in advance of the Nov. 3 election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mission Local spoke with or received photos from more than a dozen voters from across San Francisco demonstrating tears along the side of the outer envelope of the ballot. Additionally, a number of Mission Local employees\u2019 ballot envelopes were torn. In some cases, the rip was minor but, in others, it was significant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither Mission Local nor the Department of Elections has received a report of an actual ballot being damaged or spoiled \u2014\u00a0only tears of the outer envelope. But several voters expressed a sense of unease in a climate in which threats against participatory democracy are commonplace on a national level, if not a local one<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ASan Francisco voters have been unnerved by a spate of torn ballots<\/p>\n

John Arntz, the director of San Francisco\u2019s Department of Elections, said he is aware of the reports. \u201cSome envelopes experienced these issues when moving through equipment at the\u201d United States Postal Service, he said. \u201cThe USPS indicated that when they observed the issues, they manually processed the remaining packets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A USPS spokesperson said she could not immediately comment. This article will be updated when new information is presented.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Arntz added that \u201cthe condition of the exterior envelope does not affect whether the ballots are usable. As long as the four ballot cards and the return envelope are unaffected, voters can vote those ballots and return them to the Department. All voted ballots will be counted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ASan Francisco voters, from throughout the city, have complained of torn ballots being mailed to their homes. <\/p>\n

The Department of Elections put out a release guiding voters with torn envelopes to check for all four ballot cards, a ballot return envelope and \u201can insert with voting instructions.\u201d\u00a0 It is not yet clear why this alleged mechanical difficulty arose in 2026 and not earlier. This November\u2019s ballot is large<\/a>, but San Francisco frequently features lengthy ballots<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is also not yet clear how many of San Francisco\u2019s 535,787 ballots had been processed mechanically before the USPS purportedly noticed problems and switched to manual.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ASan Francisco voters have noted that their ballots have been arriving in torn and damaged envelopes. Photo by Nicholas David<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scads of San Franciscans have posted photos on the internet of their torn or crumpled ballot envelopes, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-488470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}