Election officials in and around Phoenix on Wednesday sought to dispel claims that Sharpie-brand felt tip markers distributed at polling places to fill in paper ballots would invalidate votes when submitted to the counting machine.
''Did you know we use Sharpies in the Vote Centers so the ink doesn’t smudge as ballots are counted onsite? New offset columns on the ballots means bleed through won’t impact your vote!'' the Maricopa County Elections Department said on its Twitter account.
The comments came following reports that Sharpie felt tip pens were being distributed at Republican dominant precincts to fill in ballots. One video viewed more than 600,000 times showed a woman who said only ballots filled in with a ballpoint pen were being counted.
Twitter posts that made the claim about the felt tip pens invalidating ballots were flagged by the social media platform as potentially ''misleading'' and were prohibited from being distributed further.
Erika Flores, spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Elections Department, assured AZFamily — a jointly operated website of Phoenix independent television station KTVK and local CBS affiliate KPHO — that a black pen, a blue pen or ''Sharpie'' marker were OK for filling in the ballot because new ballot-counting machines were able to read all three.
''Vote Centers use fine tip sharpies as they have the fastest drying ink, therefore preventing smudges when put through the Vote Center tabulation equipment,'' according to the county website.
Maricopa County is the largest county in Arizona and contains nearly 4.5 million people, more than half the population of the state.
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