Officials Are Asking People to Stop Disinfecting Mail-In Ballots
Let's do a little experiment Grab yourself a piece of paper. Grab a bottle of hand sanitizer. Now douse the piece of paper with the hand sanitizer. The paper doesn't really last, does it? Well, there are people that are actually doing this to their mail-in ballots.
Election officials in Sacramento County have had to inform the public that they don't have to worry about contracting COVID-19 from their mail-in ballots, and that they need to stop 'disinfecting' their ballots. Courtney Bailey-Kanelos, Registrar of Voters in Sacramento County has said that they've received at least 100 ballots that have been damaged because they were sprayed with disinfectant or alcohol spray. You don't have to worry about any mail-in ballot being infected with COVID-19, so there's no need to disinfect is yourself. Bailey-Kanelos said:
We understand if for the outgoing white envelope that you get that maybe the mail service carrier may have touched, you want to kind of hold that aside for 24 hours. Everything inside the pink return envelope, the ballots themselves, they have been inserted by a machine weeks ago, so they are safe.
Are the people who dropped off their ruined ballot screwed and won't have their vote count? No. While they won't be processing those ballots that have been destroyed, they are working to track down those that turned them in and get new ballots to them. But here's my question... Should they? If they weren't smart enough to not soak their PAPER ballot in liquid, should they be allowed to vote?