Election officials in Kentucky are pushing back on unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud after a video depicting an apparent technical glitch on a ballot-marking device amassed tens of millions of views on social media.
Officials say the video depicts a “voter error” that is easily preventable and did not impact the voter’s final ballot.
In the viral video, a voter in Laurel County, Kentucky, appears to be attempting to tap on Donald Trump’s name on a touchscreen voting machine, which selected the option for Kamala Harris. The video cuts off abruptly and does not show the voter’s final ballot.
A spokesperson for the Kentucky secretary of state said that the video shows “voter error.”
“Our Office has received no complaints about ‘vote switching’ or other long-ago debunked rumors. We contacted the county clerk, who confirmed voter error and that the ballot-marking device works correctly,” the spokesperson said.
According to Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown, the voter who posted the original video was able to cast their ballot as intended.
The video shows a ballot-marking device that produces a paper ballot after a voter selects their choices, according to Brown.
An ExpressVote machine is seen during early voting at a polling station at the Black Mountain Public Library in Black Mountain, N.C., Oct. 21, 2024.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Voters have multiple opportunities to confirm their choice before a ballot is printed, and voters can reprint their ballot twice if they are not satisfied with their choice.
“Once you are satisfied with your ballot, you may place it into the scanner, and it verifies that it has been counted,” Brown said.
Brown acknowledged that election workers were able to recreate the issue one time, “after several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario.”
“This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not,” Brown said.
Both the Laurel County Clerk and Election Systems & Software — the company that produces the ExpressVote ballot marking device — suggested the video inaccurately depicts how the machine normally functions.
The Laurel County Clerk’s Office shared a video of a user tapping through the candidate options without issue, to demonstrate that the machine works well.
“In the video posted you can see us going back and forth through the names with no issues. This is the same machine used by the voter in the video,” Brown said.
In a statement, an Election Systems & Software spokesperson said that issues with their touch screen voting machines are “rare.”
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump noted on X that election officials were unable to find any errors when testing the machine.
“The legal team at @GOP immediately investigated a voter’s report of a machine malfunction that wouldn’t select President Trump in Kentucky. We called election officials directly. They separated the machine, conducted proper testing, didn’t find any errors, and confirmed that voters could cast their ballots properly,” Lara Trump said.
The Laurel County Clerk’s office said the machine was taken out of service immediately after the incident.
“Detectives have been in touch with the county clerk and recommended they change out the voting machine,” Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement. “All Kentucky voters can have confidence that our elections are secure and any potential issues will be addressed quickly.”
“Touch screen voting machines do not flip votes,” Election Systems & Software said in a statement.
“Voting machines are designed to accurately capture a voter’s choices, and allow them to see and verify those choices on screen and on a paper ballot before casting that paper for tabulation,” the statement said. “There is no scenario in which a voter would be forced to cast a ballot that they believe did not reflect their intentions.”
