In North Carolina and other states, a ballot isn’t disqualified if a poll worker marks it

Elections officials in North Carolina and other states are correcting the record on how ballots are counted — an effort to combat misinformation circulating on social media.

Images in a number of social media posts on X, TikTok, Facebook and elsewhere falsely claimed that ballots will be disqualified if a poll worker writes on them.

One Oct. 12 Facebook post said: “When you are checking in at the polls and they [poll workers] happen to write anything on your ballot before they give it to you to put in the voting machine … a letter, a checkmark, a letter star, an R or a D any writing of any kind … please request a new ballot. Your ballot will be disqualified if it is written on.”

That claim is inaccurate, several state elections officials said.

“These posts have been circulating for several years and have resurfaced recently in many North Carolina counties. They are still false,” the North Carolina State Board of Elections said in a statement.

Elections officials in Illinois, Tennessee, Florida and New Mexico issued similar warnings.

PolitiFact debunked an identical claim before the 2024 elections.

In some states — including North Carolina and Texas — elections officials are required by law to mark voters’ ballots to ensure they can be retrieved, if necessary.

In North Carolina, state law requires election workers to sort ballots by precinct — but counties don’t open early voting sites in every precinct. So at early voting sites, poll workers may mark a voter’s ballot to help election officials sort ballots back into the proper precincts after the election for reporting and data purposes, state elections officials said.

Poll workers at early voting sites may also assign a special number to each ballot so that they can retrieve a ballot if its eligibility is challenged or if the voter dies before Election Day, according to elections officials.

Poll workers may mark ballots for other reasons, the elections board said. Stray marks on a ballot — placed by voters or poll workers — might only affect a ballot’s eligibility if they’re in the bars located in the margins of the ballot, or in the ovals tabulators check to determine someone’s vote.

Our ruling

Social media posts said that if an election worker writes anything on your ballot before you put it in the voting machine, “your ballot could be disqualified.”

In some states, election officials are required by law to mark voters’ ballots — often to promote election security. Doing so does not disqualify the ballot.

We rate this claim False.