Some voters used pens with fading ink on early ballots, Arizona official says

It isn’t actually “invisible ink.”

But the state’s top election official said a small number of voters are using a type of pen on their early ballots and the return envelopes where the ink appears to be fading.

If that doesn’t cause problems with the immediate tabulation and discerning of voters’ choices, it could create issues if ballots have to be recounted, said Lisa Marra, the state’s election director within the Secretary of State’s Office.

The problem could stem from voters using erasable ink pens, something she terms “very common and popular today,’’ to fill out their ballots and sign the envelopes in which they are returned.

“In the current Arizona heat we’re experiencing, those pen marks could fade quickly,’’ she said in an email Friday to county election officials.

Ballot envelopes could be the easiest to resolve, Marra said.

She said recorders could scan in the signatures — legally required on the outside of envelopes — and preserve them digitally, even if the writing on the actual envelope still may fade.

The ballots themselves are a different problem. They have to go to boards whose members will open them for tabulation by machine.

“Having seen many ballots over the years filled out in pencil, yellow highlighter, or the use or pink or purple sparkly gel ink, this doesn’t surprise me that the new pen technology with the ability to erase ink mistakes could cause problems,’’ said Marra, who formerly was the election administrator in Cochise County.

One solution, she said, is for election officials to duplicate the ballots that appear to have faded ink, “just like you would a ballot filled out in pencil or ink color that the tabulators can’t read.’’

Marra said tabulators kick out for human review those that aren’t clear.

“If unclear marks are not cleared up, the machine doesn’t count the mark,’’ she said.

But this is about more than the immediate count. That’s because after ballots are tabulated they are sent to storage where they can remain — unless there is a need for a recount.

“Even in temperature-controlled areas, it’s Arizona and high temperatures will continue for several months,’’ she said.

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“In the event of a recount, there is a high probability those ballots completed with an erasable ink pen (or pencil) could fade even more, to the point of appearing blank,’’ Marra said. “If this were the case, the results in an automatic recount would certainly not match the original results, through no fault of the counties.’’

She said the best course of action would be to clear up any of those “unclear’’ marks at the front end of the process, before storage.

The chances of a recount are not as remote as they once were.

Up through the 2020 election a recount was required only when the margin of difference between the top two candidates was no more than 0.1% or 200 votes, whichever is less.

In 2021 lawmakers voted to change that to 0.5%.

That change is significant.

Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes in 2020 by 10,457 votes over then-incumbent Donald Trump, a margin of just 0.3%. Had the current law been in effect, it would have required a recount of the more than 3.3 million ballots cast.

Aaron Thacker, spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office, said at this point the problem appears to be small — less than 30 ballots. He said that they were reported from only Pima, Pinal and Yavapai counties.

But Marra pointed out there has been a focus in recent years on the ink and pens used by voters. That included assertions in 2020 that the use of Sharpie felt-tipped pens at Maricopa County voting locations was causing some bleed-through on ballots, leading to claims that tabulators were “reading’’ votes that actually were from races on the other side of the ballot.

Mark Brnovich, attorney general at the time, said a review by his office convinced him that no one was being cheated out of a vote because of the Sharpies.

There also is the fact that ballots are set up so the “bubbles’’ voters fill in to mark their choices are offset from races on the opposite side. So even if there is some bleed, it would not show as an extra mark in a different race.

Maricopa County officials, who were sued over the use of Sharpies, said those pens were the best choice. They said the ink dries quickly and does not smear and create problems as ballots are fed through counting machines.