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In fact, the ballots used for early voting and on Election Day this monthstill instructed voters to "use black or blue pen only."
Poll workers heard complaints about Sharpies all day
For an election cycle requiring so many large-scale changes so quickly because of coronavirus, such as the establishment of new vote centers and social distancing procedures, poll workers and elections officials said there were few, if any, widespread issues.
Except, of course, several poll workers said voters were worried about Sharpies all day.
The Arizona Attorney General's Office said it received more than 1,000 complaints on the topic.
Ric Serrano, who voted at San Tan Village in Gilbert, said the machines were identifying overvotes on voters' ballots consistently at his polling place while he was there, and everyone thought it was because of the Sharpies. Poll workers started to give out black and blue pens, worried that it might be the pens causing the issues, he said.
The voters either decided to cast their ballot with overvotes and have those races not count, to spoil that ballot and try a new ballot, or to cast a sealed ballot for further review — any way, their votes would be counted.
The county later said that it was the mix of ink that threw off the tabulators at that location. But Serrano said that's the opposite of what happened, and he__ still thinks it was the Sharpies__.
Chadwick Tialino, who was a poll worker at Southeast Regional Library in Gilbert, said he at one point convinced the lead poll worker to switch to handing out ballpoint pens, just to avoid voter complaints. But then county headquarters told them to go back to using Sharpies.
He said he was surprised by how suspicious voters seemed when they tried to tell them that Sharpies were fine, and how voters would give them "accusatory" looks.
He said on Election Day he "went to bed knowing" that the concerns would blow up into a conspiracy theory overnight.
Tialino said he wants to know more about what the county did to educate people on the switch to Sharpies. He called it a "complete failure on the county’s part to get the word out."
Grace Stuckey, a Republican who worked as a poll worker at Sheraton Crescent Hotel in Phoenix, said she believes the county should have better informed the public, and ink pens should have been provided as well, so voters could choose.
The whole issue made poll workers feel stressed and voters unhappy, she said.
>https://archive.ph/Esjjj
And Just like that, the Fake News cares aboutink color
Blue ink, black ink, red ink: Why ink color matters when handling Arizona ballots
Mary Jo Pitzl
Arizona Republic
Published 3:34 p.m. MT Apr. 23, 2021Updated 5:18 p.m. MT Apr. 23, 2021
When Republic reporter Jen Fifield pointed out the blue-ink pen issue to Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas, the firm doing the election audit, he at first said blue pens were acceptable because the machines only could read black ink. He later questioned his response and said he would look further into the matter. The blue pens were switched out for green pens before any real ballots were taken out of the boxes.