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Polling station in Arizona
Photo: CHENEY ORR / REUTERS
While the votes of the US elections are being counted, disinformation campaigns are repeatedly orchestrated against their legitimation.
In addition to the legal disputes in Michigan and Wisconsin, the state of Arizona is the focus of the Trump campaign.
Joe Biden is quite far in the front there so far.
The AP news agency and the otherwise well-disposed TV broadcaster Fox News have already agreed that the president will no longer be able to make up this gap.
However, under the hashtag #Sharpiegate on Twitter and elsewhere on the Internet, supporters of the president can specifically and on a broad front cast doubts about the outcome - and thus question the legitimacy of the election.
At the center of the alleged conspiracy against Republican voters are rather inconspicuous objects: felt-tip pens,
called
sharpies
in the USA
.
Above all on Twitter, numerous accounts with high reach, such as the "Students for Trump", spread the rumor en masse that election workers in polling stations in Arizona had specifically given out felt-tip pens to Trump supporters - and then declared the ballot papers invalid.
Trump's son Eric also spread the rumor - and called on Fox News to immediately revoke the forecast.
His father would win the state if counted honestly.
It is true: nothing.
The authorities of the apparently particularly hard hit Maricopa County said that felt-tip pens were impractical because, unlike ballpoint pens, they had the unpleasant property of occasionally smearing.
Also push the paint through the paper.
Nevertheless, the corresponding ballot papers would be counted normally.
Katie Hobbs, first deputy governor of Arizona, said this in several TV interviews.
No election worker at the polling station would distribute pens that would invalidate ballot papers.
Incidentally, postal voters would "fill in whatever they can find their ballots at home," Hobbs told Fox News.
Of course, they would all be counted, whether with a felt pen or ballpoint pen.
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