North Carolina Election Board Debunks Ballot Invalidation Claims

The North Carolina State Board of Elections is countering social media misinformation claiming that ballots are invalidated if election workers write on them. These claims, which resurfaced on platforms including X, TikTok, and Facebook, have been rated as false by officials and fact-checkers.

Agency officials clarified that state law actually requires election workers to make specific notations on ballots to ensure they can be retrieved or sorted by precinct for data reporting. These markings include special identification numbers for early or by-mail voters to handle eligibility challenges, as well as labels such as P for provisional or A for absentee to prevent tabulator errors. Similar legal requirements for ballot markings exist in Texas.

Officials in Illinois, Tennessee, Florida, and New Mexico have also issued warnings against these claims. The board noted that stray marks do not prevent a ballot from being counted as long as the selection ovals and margin bars remain unaffected. PolitiFact noted that identical claims were previously debunked before the 2024 elections.