"A very reliable good friend of mine just finished pollworker training and she texted me this.....Just finished Poll Manager training! I passed all the classes. 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," says an April 11, 2025 Facebook post.
"Your ballot could be disqualified if it is written on. Please be on the lookout for this type of behavior."
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Screenshot from Facebook taken April 18, 2025
The same claim has circulated elsewhere on Facebook and Instagram.
AFP investigated misleading posts with the same text ahead of the November 2024 US election, determining that "R" and "D" likely referred to the American Republican and Democratic parties.
In Canada, Mark Carney called a snap general election for April 28, just days after being sworn in as prime minister. Advance polls opened on April 18 following debates between the leaders in English and French.
Some parts of Canada do use machines to count votes during provincial and local elections, but Elections Canada, which manages federal elections and referendums, does not deploy them (archived here).
Instead of feeding ballots into a tabulator, voters place paper ballots into a box, which is sealed until after polls close. The papers are then hand-counted by poll workers in the...
A Guatemalan national residing in the U.S. illegally has been indicted for his alleged role in smuggling a 14-year-old girl into the country. Juan Tiul Xi, 26, was indicted on Thursday for alleged...