Maybe I’m missing something, but why would you steal the ink unless you were going to forcibly dip someone’s thumb in it? To what end?
strong residue of a certain color ink on them. And of course there are the religious objectors (JWs). And leftist troublemakers who would disrupt the election process by showing up at the precincts with purple thumbs when they actually hadn’t voted yet, demanding records be checked. And I guarantee that in some hard core pockets of organized vote fraud, the real ink would be replaced with one whose color can be chemically neutralized just as fast as it went on. Really, low tech security measures just don’t work in a high tech country.
Hmmm, I wonder why the beginning of my reply to you got cut off. Anyway, it referred to the widespread use of inks of all colors (by artists, printers, paint-mixers at Home Depot, etc) providing plausible excuses for color residue on fingers, and the related widespread availability of very effective cleaning products for removing such residue.