Following an election fraud expert vindicating
National File’s reporting during Monday’s hearing in
Arizona, and having discovered multiple new inconsistencies in the
official explanations, National File is issuing a fact check on the
Arizona SharpieGate controversy.
The hashtag #SharpieGate went viral during the presidential
election in Arizona, with multiple claims that Sharpies would
invalidate the ballots of Trump voters, and has been subject to
fact checks by various organizations. National File can reveal that
within the fact checks, media commentary, statements from election
officials and voting machine companies, there are serious
inconsistencies within their stories.
In a viral video from Maricopa County, one woman explained how
she saw the ballots of two people ahead of her get rejected when
using Sharpies, but that hers went through fine using a ballpoint
pen. After she began handing out ballpoint pens, the sheriffs were
called by poll workers and she was ordered to stop handing them
out.
Fact checkers then supposedly “debunked” this viral video.
Politifact, Snopes,
and
Reuters, among others, highlighted
a video produced on October 24th by Maricopa County election
officials, explaining that Sharpies could be used, and were in
fact recommended due to their ability to dry quickly. They also
explained that new tabulation machines could read them, and they
had a new ballot design that prevented bleedthroughs.
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! Find a location before the polls
close at 7 p.m. today at https://t.co/8YEmXbWyRL. pic.twitter.com/KKG2O8rQhf— Maricopa County Elections Department (@MaricopaVote)
November 3, 2020
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said in an
interview on Fox that “nobody in a polling place… [would] give
you a pen to mark your ballot that would invalidate your ballot.
They knew what they were doing, and those ballots will be
counted.”
Here is the Arizona Secretary
of State Katie Hobbs saying ballots marked with Sharpie markers
will be counted. https://t.co/ZmYi5xysd4 pic.twitter.com/9VAyypGTqm— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo)
November 4, 2020
However, there are a number of problems with these explanations.
In the first instance, the initial viral video and further claims
of Trump voters were not addressed. Specifically: If Sharpies were
the recommended pen, why were there many instances of votes being
initially rejected when they were used, regardless of any plan to
properly tabulate rejected ballots afterwards? Why was the woman
stopped from handing out ballpoint pens?
During Monday’s hearing on election integrity in Arizona,
Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani discussed a witness testifying
that “all day she saw election officials constantly pressing the
green button when somebody was voting,” which expert witness
Colonel Phil Waldron explained was when a ballot has been rejected.
“The green button was to say “okay there’s an error, so go
ahead and push ‘cast ballot’,” and it punches that into an
error file that can be adjudicated by the election
administrator,” Waldron said.
Secretary of State Hobbs also
seemingly slipped up during an interview on CNN at the time.
Hobbs said that “even if the machines can’t read them for some
reason, a marker bled through to the other side, we have ways to
count them.” This contradicts the Maricopa County video and other
sources that argue that bleedthroughs are impossible, due to their
new ballot designs.
In fact, in an email dated two days prior to the video’s
release, Maricopa County’s Elections Assistant Director
Kelly Dixon acknowledged that there were issues with the
Sharpies. “Next, we’ve heard you and we know you’re
hearing issues and concerns about the Sharpie Markers,” Dixon
wrote in the email. “Starting tomorrow, 10/23, and through 11/2,
we are asking that Clerks hand voters BALLPOINT PENS rather than
Markers.”
Yet for some reason, Dixon then ordered that Sharpies be used on
election day. “We NEED to use Markers on Election Day, but for
now and through 11/2, hand voters a Ballpoint Pen. You have plenty
of pens in your supplies right now,” she said.
BUSTED: This internal email
from Maricopa County, AZ talks about “Issues and Concerns” with
markers but says they have to give voters markers anyway instead of
ballpoint pens on Election DayHUGE! pic.twitter.com/im2NMkC7gC
— Patrick Howley (@HowleyReporter)
November 18, 2020
During our investigation into SharpieGate,
National File uncovered a video from Pima County, with
officials telling voters that they should not use sharpies or any
permanent markers when casting their ballot. “Use a black or blue
ballpoint pen, no sharpies, to fill in the ovals next to your
candidates name,” the official in the video says.
Critics responded to this article by claiming that Pima County
and Maricopa County use different election equipment. This is true.
Maricopa County uses machines from Dominion Voting, while Pima and
every other county but one in Arizona uses machines from Election
Systems & Software.
Yet in the Reuters SharpieGate fact check article that
supposedly debunked the “conspiracy theory” about the Arizona
election,�they reveal that both companies stated their tabulators
would read Sharpies without any problems, meaning that their should
have been no real reason for the inconsistency between the
counties, other than the ballot design already discussed.
There are many further claims of electoral misconduct in
Arizona.
Ballot counters were discovered abandoned at a strip mall, and
the Chair of Maricopa County GOP was
forced to resign due to her failure to sign the Certificate of
Accuracy for the voting machines.
Claim: SharpieGate has been debunked and is a conspiracy
theory. Fact Check: FALSE
