Libs of TikTok revives theory that California ballot envelopes expose votes, perforations are an accessibility feature per the Secretary of State
1.5 million views meet a state where three in four Republicans distrust the count
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A vote-by-mail ballot and return envelope mailed to a Southern California resident ahead of the general election, photographed on October 17, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.
motherjones.com
Chaya Raichik, the real estate agent behind the Libs of TikTok account, announced on Sunday that the small holes punched into California's vote-by-mail return envelopes are designed to reveal how people voted. Her evidence was a video by an individual who claimed the perforations lay the vote bare to anyone handling the envelope; the ballot materials were photographed in Los Angeles on October 17. The post has been viewed 1.5 million times.
The holes have a documented purpose. Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber has stated that they help sight-impaired voters orient the envelope toward the signature line, and let election workers see at a glance whether an envelope contains a ballot. Her office issued a statement addressing the misinformation around the November 2025 statewide special election's ballot envelopes, because the same claim was circulating then. It also circulated during the 2021 gubernatorial recall. Ahead of the midterms, the claim is now in its third documented election cycle.
A video requires a phone camera and an envelope. The correction requires a voter to go looking for a statement from the Secretary of State. Raichik's post reached 1.5 million people within days; the state's explanation, on record for nearly a year, did not prevent the return.
An August study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 75 percent of the state's Republicans describe themselves as "not confident" in California's election systems. The researchers attributed the result to stories of pervasive fraud — among them the envelope holes and claims about noncitizen voting. Federal agencies have alleged that tens of thousands of noncitizens may be voting in California. President Donald Trump said in June that Nithya Raman could not have won her Los Angeles mayoral primary, and that the city's elections "must have been rigged."
The holes themselves have not changed. They sit where the state put them: so that voters who cannot see the signature line can find it, and so that election workers can tell an empty envelope from a full one.