Script is safe: Your ballot won’t be disqualified if an election official writes on it

Mark our words: Your ballot won’t be disqualified if an election worker writes on it.

But social media posts tell a different story.

"I want you all to know something … if you are checking in at the polls and they happen to write anything on your ballot before they give it to you to put in the voting machine ... a letter, a checkmark, a star, an R or a D any writing of any kind ... please request a new ballot," an Oct. 20 Instagram post read. "Your ballot could be disqualified if it is written on. Please be on the lookout for this type of behavior."

The same post circulated on Facebook and X this summer, and similar claims surfaced during the 2020 election.

The Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

 (Screenshot from Instagram.)

Featured Fact-check

X posts

stated on October 22, 2024 in posts on X

A photo shows The Atlantic published a story headlined “Trump is Literally Hitler.”

Although election rules vary by state, an election worker marking your ballot won't invalidate your vote. This has been fact-checked many times.

In August, Florida election clerks reassured voters that officials are trained to avoid writing on ballots, and even if it happens, the ballots won’t be disqualified, according to The Associated Press, which fact-checked a verbatim version of this claim.

Elections officials from Massachusetts, Maryland and Maine similarly told Snopes in August that poll workers rarely write on ballots and that stray marks won’t invalidate them.

In some states, election officials are required by law to mark voters’ ballots — often to promote election security. Election workers in North Carolina must write an identifying number on mail-in and early voting ballots, allowing them to be retrieved and discarded if "voter challenges" arise, such as voters dying before Election Day or voting more than once.

Heider Garcia, an elections administrator in Texas, told PolitiFact in 2020 that Texas law requires poll workers to sign the back of voters' ballots to verify the ballots’ authenticity.

We rate the claim that ballots can be disqualified if an election worker writes on them False.