Ever see what a lumpy object does to a letter cancelling machine? One time I was asked to run the ting for an hour or so (supervisor was desperate). The cancelling machine is a huge system of belts, metal rollers, and an electronic eye that detects where the stamp is, turns the enveople the right way so it can be cancelled, and then cancels it with very black ink.
Everything was going fine until an envelope with a tooth in it came through the metal feeders. Tooth went flying across the room and before I could shut the machine down, the envelope along about ten others behind it were instantly scrunched up into an large--and very black--mass.
Can't imagine what a pen in an envelope would do!:)
LOL! We were laughing about it earlier--how a group of bureaucrat wonks must have developed and edited the Absentee Voter FAQs, and nobody noticed how the directions for voting the ballot, using the pen and returning [it] were ridiculously ambiguous.
I'll bet dollars to donuts a good number of those Bic pens went into the envelopes before the USPS provided feedback, and a group of bureaucrat wonks developed and edited an insert for the absentee ballots to clarify their original message.