According to a number of sources, cases of the use of fountain pens with disappearing ink are periodically recorded in Russian elections of various sizes. Soon after the entry is made, it evaporates and the form becomes available for fraud. We checked if this is true.

This is what the famous journalist Alexander Minkin wrote in his essay “Hello Obama" from the series “Letters to the President” in 2009:

“If America has dishonest elections compared to us, it’s scary to think what’s going on there. Our elections are completely fair and fully comply with democratic standards. At the same time, we use disappearing ink, the sick and the dead vote (all for United Russia), there are articles in newspapers about widespread falsifications, lawsuits in courts, sociologists mathematically prove the falsity.”

Some media outlets that covered the vote on constitutional amendments in 2020 turned on Among the most popular fakes is a video recording in which the use of disappearing ink was obvious, but it turned out that it was made in Kazakhstan.

First of all, we note that disappearing ink must be distinguished from sympathetic (invisible), which have the opposite effect: they appear after some time if certain conditions are met. It makes no sense to give the latter to voters during elections. But fountain pens with disappearing ink are quite effective for such purposes - you can buy them for pennies, and they work reliably.

Let's take a look at some of the uses of disappearing ink in Russian elections in the 21st century.

The first loud call on this topic came in 2009. Then the head of the “A Just Russia” faction in the State Duma, Nikolai Levichev, showed journalists materials confirming the use of disappearing ink in the elections to the Volgograd Regional Duma, held on March 1. In particular, on one of video recordings a member of the election commission herself demonstrates the effect of disappearing ink: a mark made with a pen taken from a voting booth disappears from a sheet of paper after some time. Typically, only at the aforementioned polling station No. 389, 285 invalid ballots were found on election day, and most of them were blank. According to the deputy, on March 6–8, some of them became valid: a mark indicating voting for United Russia appeared on the ballots. The use of disappearing ink was then detected at six Volgograd polling stations.

On December 4, 2011, an event of a completely different rank took place in Russia - elections to the State Duma. Here, too, there was some disappearing ink, and this was recorded at a high level. Thus, the deputy head of the Central Election Commission Leonid Ivlev on the same day statedthat in the capital, representatives of one of the parties used a pen with disappearing ink. “We have known the technology since 2009. All this was discovered in a timely manner; fans of such actions were not able to commit a violation, but the fact was confirmed,” Ivlev said then, apparently referring to the Volgograd events. On the same day the BBC website published video, filmed by activists at another polling station. The footage shows how notes made with fountain pens from voting booths are easily erased with a special pencil. At the same time, a pen with disappearing ink was found in a voting booth at polling station No. 627 in Kolpino.

Several weeks passed, and for the first time it came to prosecutor's office, simultaneously going beyond the voting booths for the first time. The authors of the appeal claimed that a pen with disappearing ink was used when signing the PEC protocol at the 334th precinct in St. Petersburg. As a result, this signature disappeared from the copy of the protocol signed by the chairman of the PEC in the presence of observers, leaving only the seals. An examination carried out by the independent center Petroexpert revealed traces of the use of disappearing ink. At the same time, the data that came from this site to the system GAS "Elections" differed from those that appeared in the copies of protocols issued to observers from five parties. There were suddenly 300 more valid ballots than initially recorded, and United Russia received 369 votes in addition:

In 2012, in the elections of the head of the city of Degtyarsk, Sverdlovsk region, again showed up pens with invisible ink. Then they were replaced with normal ones right during the voting, but history is silent about how many people managed to use them. According to the head of the regional election commission, after the inspection, all pens were confiscated and the corresponding acts were drawn up.

In 2013, on the Unified Voting Day, treacherous pens were found at a polling station in the Moscow region and recorded by the local election commission. And in Khakassia in 2018, during the elections of the head of the region - immediately three sections. Moreover, in the latter case, the candidate from United Russia lost the elections in the first round, but refused the second.

And these are not all the cases where the use of disappearing ink during voting in Russia was discovered by eyewitnesses. Many complaints since 2011 can be found on the project website “Map of election irregularities" Unfortunately, vanishing ink scams are not a conspiracy theory, but a very real phenomenon.