I do not know which states this person is referring to, or the accuracy of the claim, but in Oklahoma a No. 2 pencil is required. The instructions say to use nothing else when voting absentee.

At the polling place, they use some sort of cheap black felt-tipped pen.

Thanks for posting the UniBall note.

I needed a chuckle.

But Alex, my Colorado ballot doesn't have ovals to fill in, it has boxes. Will the Uni-ball work for me?

With election day right around the corner, we here at Verivote (tm) want to bring to your attention this new opportunity to insure that your vote is properly counted.

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The polling places provide the pens, don't they?

The election people get mad and make you clean the touch-screen with Windex.

Actually, this may be an attempt AT voter fraud, as I remember from helping my mom fill out her absentee ballot that they specifically said to use ONLY a BALLPOINT pen, NOT a ROLLERBALL (a Uni-ball is a roller-ball pen.) It only gets nuttier...

Classic.

...that vote fraud is a viable advertising theme. I've never been prouder to be [a fake] American!

At least they are trying to think up something fun. We all need a little humor and levity in the last days of the campaign.

Thanks for a nice chuckle. Today/tomorrow are going to be nail biters.

I just got a very large (9 x 11) full color direct mail ad from my local Republican Party. The cover has a very cozy pictury of Hillary and McCain and the title "With intensity and hard work, she left 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling." Inside, it says some very nice things about Hillary. McCain promises to "make sure Hillary's efforts are not forgotten" and how he "shares Hillary's goals." It closes with, "Most importantly, Senator Clinton knows how to reach across the aisle and solve problems. Both she and John McCain have shown the American people proven results, not pretty words."

This from the Florida Republicans, a crowd that would have driven a tractor over Hillary at the first opportunity. It really sounds like Hillary has endorsed McCain. They're sending this thing to registered Democrats. This goes along with a stack of direct mail ads I've gotten about how Republicans are the only party standing strong against terrorism. I'm not talking implications. I'm talking about ads that actually say "Vote Republican and Defeat Evil."

It's like this election has transformed our country into Bizarro World.

Uniball has indeed released a new line of pens that is supposed to be immune to check washing. However,

1. If you use paper ballots,

2. These do not require state-issued Sharpie-style permanent ink,

3. They allow the voter to use a personal pens,

4. IF someone is going to scrub your ballot to change your vote (instead of put it in the trunk of their car and drive away),

Then perhaps you need a permanent ink.

Otherwise, let's worry much more about vote flipping on uncalibrated machines, ballot disappearance, and punch machines from the Eisenhower administration.

I'm the first to point out that the e-mail worked, and you gave it the coverage it desired. Not that it's a problem -- it is all the things you say it is -- but it did work!

If our paperwork or bag-tags got soaked, the Uniball ink never ran. They are very good pens. Getting out Sharpie ink is easy compared to getting out Uniball ink.

Why do I find myself inclined to suspect that the person who's responsible for writing the original e-mail potentially might have financial ties of some sort to Newell Rubbermaid (the parent company which manufactures Uni-Ball pens)? If so, it certainly wouldn't surprise me...

It also strikes me that this could potentially be a subtle scheme aimed at disenfranchising voters, especially since some states reportedly adhere so stringently to the official guidelines for ballot submission that even the smallest error can result in that ballot being rejected as invalid. As an example, if the ballot instructions clearly indicate that the ballot should be filled out with a No. 2 pencil, using a Uni-Ball pen might prevent that ballot from being counted. the only problem with this strategy, of course, is that the unpredictable nature of e-mail forwarding means that at least some of the ballots which might be discarded could possibly be votes for the candidate which the author of this e-mail wants to win!

Uni-Ball pens: For voters with one testicle.

Hey you have to give it to these guys, they are truely bipartisan. There are just looking out for the country. They don't the liberal illuminati to be able to tamper with the votes. Now they just need to invent a pen that only Americans can use. They would make millions.

While voting in the 2006 elections in my precinct on the north side of Chicago, the relatively short line was held up by a lack of the "right" kind of markers/pens for the optical scan machines. (My polling place had one or two touch-screen machines but they were saving those for people with disabilities or difficulty voting; everyone else was put in line for the optical scanner/paper ballot). When I asked the poll workers why it mattered what pen was used, they said only certain types of ink were being read accurately by the machines, and people kept walking off with the pens after voting. When it was my turn to get to use the pen, I saw that it was a craft-type pen (similar to a calligraphy pen) that I recognized from my mom's craft projects. The poll workers had had to make a trip to Joann Fabrics to buy more of them, as they were the only kind that the machines were reading and that was the only place that had them. You had to hand the pen back along with your ballot.