Rumors fly about Sharpie ink

During the week of the election I saw a message sent to the Union-tribune subscribers Facebook page. A woman said she had been given a Sharpie pen at her polling station in Bonsall. She said she had later learned that Sharpie ink might invalidate her ballot.

That was false. The ink is fine on a ballot. The Sharpie rumor was making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter. U-T government and political reporter Charles T. Clark heard the same. He first saw it out of Arizona, where he has family and was checking their social media.

Clark said election officials there responded that the rumor was untrue, and even if a Sharpie had been used, the ballot would still be counted.

The San Diego County Registrar of Voters office apparently heard similar misinformation. It tweeted this Thursday:

“In San Diego County, we do not provide Sharpies to voters to mark their ballot. What we use are archival pens, which we researched over 10 years ago as the best marking instrument for a voter . ... Regardless,

using a Sharpie does not invalidate a ballot. Our voting system prevents a situation where if a voter used a Sharpie and it bleeds through to the other side, it will not impact any ‘bubbles’ on the opposite side.”

• A reader from Carlsbad emailed Thursday asking why the U-T did not publish charts on updated COVID data that morning, as the paper usually does.the county, where the U-T gets the data on infections, was closed Veterans Day.

• Matthew T. Hall, the U-T’S editorial and opinion director and national president for Society of Professional Journalists, will give a webinar on writing from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17. The event, titled “Write Better Right Now,” is being presented by the San Diego Press Club.

The webinar is free and open to the public. It will be held through the Zoom online meeting platform. Zoom membership is not required to participate.

To register for the webinar, go to sdpressclub.org.