San Francisco voters checking the mail this week have been finding their November ballots inside envelopes that are ripped along the edges, some only slightly and some badly enough that the contents show. Photos of the damaged mailers spread quickly online. City elections officials say the cause is mechanical, not sinister, and that most of those ballots can still be used.

What happened

According to the San Francisco Department of Elections, the U.S. Postal Service reported that some packets tore while running through its processing equipment. Once the problem was spotted, USPS switched to processing the rest of the vote-by-mail packets by hand, the department said. KRON4 reported that the city mailed roughly 500,000 ballots last week.

Department director John Arntz told Mission Local that the state of the outer envelope "does not affect whether the ballots are usable," and that "all voted ballots will be counted." Speaking to KRON4, he described the outer envelope as simply the package used to deliver the ballot. KRON4 reported that USPS said it is "looking into" the issue.

The department has not said how many envelopes were damaged, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The Chronicle also said elections officials had seen no evidence of tampering and had not received any report of an actual ballot being damaged, only the outside mailers. Mission Local, which found torn envelopes among its own staff's ballots, noted it is still unclear why the problem showed up this year. The November ballot is long, but San Francisco ballots often are.

What to do if yours arrived torn

  • Check what's inside. A complete packet has four ballot cards, a ballot return envelope and an instruction insert.
  • If the four cards and the return envelope are undamaged, mark your ballot as usual and send it back in the enclosed return envelope.
  • If a ballot card or the return envelope is damaged, request a replacement. The department takes requests through its online Voter Portal, by phone at 415-558-6100, or by email at sfvote@sfgov.org, according to Bay City News.

The department says it is keeping in touch with the Postal Service to watch future ballot mailings. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.