California Secretary of State Shirley Weber on Monday asserted that mail-in voting for the state’s Nov. 4 special election was intentionally designed to reveal how people voted, pushing back against the amount of misinformation circulating on social media sites.
Weber, the state’s top elections official, disputed claims by some Republicans and far-right factions that holes in ballot envelopes would allow election officials to see how Californians voted on Proposition 50, a redistricting ballot measure that will be decided in a special election in just over three weeks.
“The small hole in the ballot envelope is an accessibility feature to allow visually impaired voters to orient themselves to where they need to sign the envelope,” Weber said in a statement Monday.
Weber said voters can place their ballots in a return envelope in a way that doesn’t reveal how they voted, or they can vote in person at early voting locations that open soon or on Nov. 4.
Weber’s decision to “set the record straight” comes as a conspiracy theory exploded online in recent days that alleges that mail-in ballots received by 23 million Californians were intentionally designed to reveal the votes of those opposed to the bill.
“If California voters vote ‘no’ to Gavin Newscome’s redistricting plan, the answer will be revealed through a hole in the envelope,” he wrote in a Sunday post on social media platform X that has been viewed 4.8 million times. “All the Democrats are doing is cheating.”
Earlier, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was viewed more than 840,000 times, and conservative commentator and Republican California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called for the comment, citing allegations of voter fraud.
Questions raised by Republicans about ballots in previous California elections stemmed from holes in mail-in ballot envelopes intended to assist visually impaired voters and allow election officials to see if a ballot had been removed from the envelope.
The special election was called by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats to counter President Trump’s push for Republican-led states, particularly Texas, to redistrict their congressional districts before next year’s midterm elections in order to improve Republicans’ ranking in the House and strengthen their ability to enact policy in the final two years of their terms.
California Democrats responded with an unusual proposal to redraw California’s 52 legislative boundaries in mid-decade to increase Democratic representation in Congress. Congressional districts are typically drawn once every 10 years by an independent state commission created by voters in 2010.
As of Monday night, nearly 600,000 Californians had already returned their mail-in ballots, according to a vote tracking tool created by Political Data, a voter data firm led by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell, who drew the proposed congressional boundaries on the November ballot.
California Republican leaders opposed to the voting bill have expressed concerns about voting conspiracy theories, which they fear will suppress Republican lawmakers and others from voting against Prop. 50.
“Don’t make people panic over something that could easily be fixed by flipping the ballot,” said Roxanne Hoge, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Republican Party. “We need every no vote and we need it now.”
Former state Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, who heads one of the two main committees opposing Proposition 50, likened not voting early to sitting out a football game until the third quarter.
“I can understand why voters would be concerned when they see a hole in their envelope…because your vote is your job, and being able to cast a secret ballot is the foundation of our system,” she said in an interview. “That being said, the worst thing you can do if you’re unhappy with the way things are here in California is not vote. So I’m going to continue to push for early voting and voting by mail. That’s always been a core principle for me.”
