‘Sharpiegate’: Trump supporters protest in Arizona claiming voter fraud

Unsubstantiated claims alleging some votes forged for President Donald Trump weren’t counted in Maricopa County, Arizona, an necessary battleground within the 2020 US election, as a result of voters used Sharpie pens started spreading amongst right-wing social media accounts on Tuesday night time as election outcomes trickled in.

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Dubbed “Sharpiegate” by conservatives on social media, the allegations could possibly be used to attempt to undermine election leads to the traditionally Republican state of Arizona, which the Associated Press(AP) referred to as for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden with 51 per cent of the vote.

Similar rumors about Sharpies or different writing instruments and ballots have circulated in Chicago, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Connecticut in latest days.

Maricopa County officers had been attempting to tell voters that Sharpies didn’t intervene with ballots, and had posted a video explaining that on Election Day.

The county, which incorporates Arizona’s largest metropolis, Phoenix, final yr rolled out new tabulation tools that made Sharpie pens the best choice on Election Day as a result of they’ve the quickest drying ink, mentioned Megan Gilbertson, the Maricopa County Elections Department’s communications director.

“The Sharpies are just fine to use,” Gilbertson mentioned in an interview. “They do not impact tabulation, and we encourage them on Election Day because of how fast the ink dries.”

By Tuesday night time, some Arizona Trump voters had begun to query whether or not ballots had been counted.

Andrea Thiele, 48, of Surprise, Arizona, mentioned in an interview that when she took her daughter to vote she observed Sharpies and located them “fishy.”

The voting machine accepted her daughter’s poll, she mentioned.

Later, nevertheless, she found a viral Facebook video saying that Trump voters had their ballots rejected after Maricopa County ballot employees had given voters Sharpies.

Now, she is worried the poll wasn’t counted.

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“I suspect there’s fraud happening, absolutely,” she mentioned.

The state legal professional basic’s workplace mentioned in a press release to Reuters on Wednesday it had acquired tons of of complaints about Sharpie use and despatched a letter to Maricopa County officers to analyze the considerations.

“There is no concern about ballots being counted because of the pen being used to count ballots,” Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs mentioned on CNN Wednesday.

By Wednesday afternoon, the video Thiele noticed had been shared on Facebook 101,000 instances, and had been promoted by distinguished conservatives, together with Sidney Powell, the legal professional representing former Trump nationwide safety adviser Michael Flynn.

Following these 101,000 shares, it was labelled “false information” on Facebook by fact-checkers who’ve partnered with the social media firm to root out disinformation concerning the 2020 election.

Facebook has additionally blocked the hashtag “#sharpiegate” Facebook spokeswoman Andrea Vallone mentioned, whereas a Twitter spokeswoman mentioned the social media firm was labelling tweets that “misleadingly claim ballots were invalidated.”

Also Read |US Election 2020: How Facebook and Twitter differ on labelling Trump’s election posts

American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp has additionally repeated the fraud claims on Twitter and urged voters to report them to the Arizona legal professional basic’s workplace.

Schlapp and Powell couldn’t instantly be reached for remark.

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief expertise officer and now director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, advised reporters Wednesday the allegations had been “disinformation.”

“Once this idea was out there in the zeitgeist, it was picked up,” he mentioned.