Prosecutor warns Arizona candidate about pen theft tweets

The Maricopa County, Ariz., attorney on Tuesday requested a Republican board of supervisors candidate stop advising people to replace pens at polling places as part of an election fraud conspiracy.

In the days leading up to the primary, Gail Golec repeatedly claimed the county’s use of fast-drying ink pens at polling places would cause the ink to bleed through and over-count ballots, calling on her supporters to instead bring their own blue-ink pen when casting their vote.

The county said it was providing the pens because slow-drying ink from ballpoint pens can easily smear inside the vote tabulation machines and cause delays.

“A source at the county tells me that people are stealing the Pentel pens given out to election day voters to mark the ballot and replacing them with ballpoint,” tweeted Garrett Archer, a politics analyst at Arizona’s ABC affiliate, on Tuesday.

“Excellent idea!” Golec responded. “Do not take use the pentel pens. They can insert votes that appear like a felt tip pens. Replace the Pentel with Blue ink pens. We must protect our vote!”

A few hours later, Golec tweeted a cease-and-desist letter from Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell sent that day requesting Golec stop encouraging people to steal the pens.

Mitchell cited an unspecified tweet from Golec earlier on Tuesday that Mitchell said constituted “advice that people should steal the pens.”

“As you well know, theft of any sort is unlawful; moreover encouraging theft of the fast-drying ink pens specifically recommended for election day voting is a deliberate attempt to interfere with election administration and will have the harmful effect of delaying the vote tabulation of election day ballots, as the wet ink harms the vote center tabulation machines,” Mitchell wrote.

But now, Golec says she never encouraged people to steal the pens.

“To the person who decided to take my words out of context and indicate that I was implying stealing pens you should be ashamed of yourself!” Golec wrote on her Telegram channel on Wednesday morning.

“The news media went nuts on it trying to defame my character twisting my intentions from election protection to election interference,” she wrote. “Even the county attorney jumped with a ridiculous cease and desist.”

The Hill has reached out to the Maricopa County attorney’s office and the Maricopa County Elections Department for comment. The county recorder deferred comment to the elections department.

Golec as of Wednesday morning trails the leading candidate in the race, Thomas Galvin, by 13 percentage points, according to the county’s Elections Department. But Golec cast doubt on the results, saying she was “not sure” what her next steps would entail.

“This morning I learned that Thomas Galvin, was selected,” Golec wrote on her Telegram channel. “I’m not going to say he was elected. There is no proof of that.”

— Updated at 1:19 p.m.

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