The claim that ballots marked with Sharpies will be invalidated has been debunked repeatedly since the 2020 US election, but videos targeting midterm voters claim machines in Pennsylvania will not be able to process marks from the felt-tip pens. This is false; election officials and a cybersecurity expert said the votes will be accurately recorded -- and if they result in adjudication, that process is not associated with fraud.

"I just got off the phone with an election representative in Pennsylvania: Dominion, Dominion, Dominion ... President Trump has spoken about the machines, there's still a problem," says conservative commentator Ann Vandersteel during a Facebook Live video posted November 5, 2022.

The clip from "Women Fighting for America" was viewed more than 89,000 times. In it, Vandersteel claims Dominion Voting Systems -- a company whose voting machines are used in about a fifth of Pennsylvania counties -- "asked everybody to use Sharpies."

She continues: "We all heard about 'Sharpie Gate' in Arizona ... bleeding outside the ovals and creating these ballot problems when the machines couldn't read them," repeating a claim AFP debunked during the 2020 election.

"You are getting adjudication piles from the Sharpies bleeding out ... It's creating a much bigger problem than the mail-in-ballots," Vandersteel says, referring to the myth that absentee ballots lead to fraud.

Screenshot of a Facebook video taken November 8, 2022

On Election Day, Vandersteel appeared in ...

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