PA Election Hearing Witness: They have the ability to use a Spectrometer to see if the ballots were mass produced by checking the INK…

RUDY: Have you ever gotten a chance to examine any of these ballots?

WITNESS: No. That would be part of the forensic process. One suggestion, whoever does the analysis is using paper and ink analysis. So a micro-photo spectrometer that would analyze the ink on the ballots to see if they were mass produced.

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For anyone wondering, Wikipedia has a good explanation on how a Spectrophotometer works:

A spectrophotometer is commonly used for the measurement of transmittance or reflectance of solutions, transparent or opaque solids, such as polished glass, or gases. Although many biochemicals are colored, as in, they absorb visible light and therefore can be measured by colorimetric procedures, even colorless biochemicals can often be converted to colored compounds suitable for chromogenic color-forming reactions to yield compounds suitable for colorimetric analysis. However, they can also be designed to measure the diffusivity on any of the listed light ranges that usually cover around 200 nm – 2500 nm using different controls and calibrations. Within these ranges of light, calibrations are needed on the machine using standards that vary in type depending on the wavelength of the photometric determination.

If you’re wondering where you can find some of these for consumers, there’s this place here: https://www.xrite.com/categories/benchtop-spectrophotometers

Here they explain how one of their Spectrophotometers works:

Last but not least, here’s a more technical explanation: