Arizona officials admit that ballots circled by strange pens have been invalidated

Reporter : Liming  /  Editor: Mei Lan / https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2020/11/05/a102979893.html / Direct translation / Image : Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images

After Arizona's "strange pen" caused a large number of ballots to be invalidated, a large number of angry voters surrounded the ballot center, demanding to know the truth. The local election committee once denied that any legitimate ballots were invalidated, but on Thursday (5th) election officials finally admitted that ballots circled by strange pens would indeed be invalidated by the machine.

A new situation has emerged in the controversy over the invalidation of legal votes by the Arizona "sharpie marker". On November 5, local time, a video posted on the Internet showed that Arizona voters confronted election officials at the counting center. The election officials finally admitted that the use of sharpie pens did affect the election results. Ballots that use this pen to circle information will be invalidated by the machine, and those who use this pen are voters in the red zone who generally support Trump.

The Twitter account Mrs Ben Gay retweeted the video and posted a post stating that “Arizona voters just asked the election department officials to admit that the scammer did dirty their votes.”

After the U.S. election was opened on November 3, since the early morning of the 4th, controversies involving the Democratic Party's alleged fraud have frequently been reported in several key swing states.

Among them, the vote count in Arizona, which is regarded as the Republican Party's iron vote district, unexpectedly "turned blue" towards the end. Afterwards, voters who supported Trump continued to respond. Through online queries, they found that their votes were somehow cancelled. The election department of Maricopa County in the state has received at least hundreds of complaints from the public, saying that the status of its ballot shows "cancelled." Voters responded that after they used the "strange pen" recommended and provided by local election officials to circle the ballots, the ink would penetrate the back of the ballots. They believed that this was the reason their ballots were invalidated.

The news quickly spread on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Afterwards, voters in Phoenix, Chicago, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other regions also made similar accusations.

Maricopa County’s election committee officials later issued a statement declaring that even votes circled with a strange pen will be included in the calculation and that legitimate votes will not be invalidated. However, many local voters still expressed that they could not trust the election committee's statement.

In the evening of the 4th, a large number of voters in Arizona who supported Trump gathered angrily outside the voting center in Arizona to protest. They shouted "Count my votes" and "Stop stealing." Some voters even carried guns. 

According to the Associated Press, a 40-year-old resident of Arizona, Chris Michael, said that he came here to ensure that all votes can be counted, hoping that the counting of votes can be ethical and legal.

Arizona has 11 electoral votes in total.