This Magic Moment

(Fox News) - Chicago has a rich history of election-day shenanigans — but what happened Tuesday may be near the top of the list. Twenty voters in Chicago's 49th ward were told that the pens they were given — the kind used for touch-screen voting — were filled with magic invisible ink to mark their paper ballots.

City election board spokesman James Allen tells FOX News — poll workers may have actually believed that the styluses they somehow ended up handing out were really inkless pens that would mark paper ballots that could be seen by scanning machines.

When the scanners rejected the ballots, the judges overrode them and processed the ballots with no votes. One voter said the poll workers insisted they had been trained in the use of the magic pens. Eventually election officials tried to contact the 20 voters to get them to come back and fill out real ballots.

Allen says "Your first reaction is ... is this a joke? Some odd things are going to happen ... We always are surprised... This is one that no one could have predicted."