Northern California county strikes back after conservative pundit implies ballot dumping
Sonoma County election officials say they are setting the record straight after a popular conservative pundit suggested that they had dumped mail-in ballots ahead of the 2020 election.
The county’s official social media accounts published a statement Friday saying that pictures circulating on the internet of election envelopes in dumpsters were actually from 2018 — not, as many Twitter users had claimed, 2020. Officials said the ballots pictured were empty and had been disposed of legally.
Photos of hundreds of blue election envelopes lying in a heap in a recycling bin went viral Friday when Elijah Schaffer, a BlazeTV host, tweeted them out, saying he was sent them anonymously from a Republic Services landfill in Sonoma County. The ZIP code seen on the envelopes read “94928,” which corresponds with Rohnert Park, south of Santa Rosa.
The tweet, which has since been removed from the site but nevertheless garnered thousands of interactions, seemed to accuse Sonoma County officials of dumping ballots ahead of the November election.
“SHOCKING: 1,000+ mail-in-ballots found in a dumpster in California,” Schaffer wrote. “Big if true.”
The comments below Schaffer’s original post were full of users accusing the county of meddling with election results.
County election officials, however, said the claims were unequivocally false.
“Please be aware: Someone posted pictures on the web showing empty Vote-by-Mail envelopes from Sonoma County in recycling bins. The pictures are of old empty envelopes from the November 2018 election that were disposed of as allowed by law,” Sonoma County officials wrote. “But some on the web are claiming its evidence of ballots for the Nov. 3 election ‘being dumped’ in California. This is not true.”
County officials added that 2020 mail-in ballots have not even been sent out yet. The local election office will mail ballots to residents on Oct. 5.
