In August 2020, a popular social media post in which a woman who is a resident of Florida has given her account in words how she was alarmed after discovering the letters "D" and "R" on the mail-in ballot envelopes she received together with her brother, who lives at the same residence.
The video that circulated online was posted by Tina Brown, a resident of Palm Beach County, as determined by the local media. The clip posted on Facebook has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times that even US President Donald Trump has retweeted the said post, WPTV reported.
In the two-minute video, Brown was seen pointing out to a string of letters and numbers located under the barcode of the mail-in ballots, knowing that she is a registered Republican, and her brother is a registered Democrat, indicating that the envelope addressed to her contains a series with a letter "R", while her brother received one with the letter "D".
Brown said in the video that a postal person will be able to identify which mail-in ballot belongs to a Democrat or a Republican and can even throw away those envelopes belonging to Republicans. Brown articulated that it is necessary for the voters to take their ballots and bring them to the voting places, adding that voting in person will be the best way. In the video Brown could be heard saying not to vote by mail, asking people to listen and be wary.
President Donald Trump retweeted a Twitter post that said more lies about the mail-in voting, adding that it was the Democrats' attempt to cheat and steal the upcoming November 2020 elections.
The tweet gained large public attention since President Trump was known for making inaccurate assertions that cast doubt on the reliability of mail-in voting, which is being considered as a significant process in the November 2020 election because of the current situation brought by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
What was seen in the video where the ballot envelopes of Brown and her brother with the letters "R" and "D" in their bar codes was actually true. However, the remark in the Facebook clip was missing some ideas that created unnecessary fear about the tagging.
After the video went viral on social media, Palm Beach County elections supervisor, Wendy Sartory Link, went to Twitter to present an explanation of why the political party-affiliated letters were seen on the envelopes.
Link admitted that the codes were there, adding that since Florida is one of nine states holding closed primaries, this means that only registered Democrat or Republican voters can cast their votes in the primary elections of the state, saying that each party has different ballots. Moreover, Link, said mail tampering is a federal offense, and up to date, she has not received any report regarding this matter.
Brown and her brother really received mail-in ballot envelopes with letters "R" and "D". However, only primary elections ballots of registered Republican and Democratic voters have those labels. General elections ballots do not have the label on them.
According to fact-checking site Snopes.com, he likelihood that Postal Service workers would tamper mail-in ballots is highly unlikely to happen. As pointed by Andrea Avery, US Postal Inspection Service spokesperson, the United States Postal Inspection Service, which is one of America's oldest law enforcement agencies, imposed more than 200 federal laws to protect all mail.
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