STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Are voting machines in Kentucky changing votes from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris? No, that's not true: There was an incident involving a single ballot marking device in Laurel County but it wasn't switching votes; instead, one voter was pressing the space between voting boxes repeatedly instead of directly in the middle of a voting box. The county election supervisor told Lead Stories, "All of our voting equipment is working properly."
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X on October 31, 2024, under the on-screen title "Thoughts?? Kentucky." The video's caption said:
🚨🚨🚨BREAKING🚨🚨🚨
Voting machines in Kentucky are literally changing the vote from Donald Trump to Kamala Harris.
This is ELECTION INTERFERENCE!
Share this video out so everyone can see!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 20:37:09 2024 UTC)
A Google News search (archived here) showed the voting machine in the video was located in Laurel County.
Laurel County Clerk's Office
Brandon Kilburn, election supervisor for the Laurel County Clerk's Office (archived here), told Lead Stories in an October 31, 2024, email, "All of our voting equipment is working properly." He continued:
To my knowledge, one voter out of 1,769 who voted today complained of an issue with the operation of our equipment due to repeatedly touching the edges of the candidate selection area instead of touching the desired candidate's name directly.
The machine in question was examined by a detective with the Kentucky Attorney General's Office in the middle of the day, in plain sight of voters. He concluded that the equipment was working properly and was safe to continue using.
Additional information (archived here), including a video of the properly working voting machine, was published on the Facebook page of Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown on October 31, 2024. The post said, in part:
The Attorney General's office has been to the vote center to check the device that has been shown across social media today. In full disclosure, after several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario, it did occur. 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. ...
These ballot marking devices are set for a voter to touch inside the whole box with the name of the candidates. 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. It remained at its location in the vote center and was set face down until the representative from the Attorney General's Office arrived to investigate. There were no claims of any issues with the device prior, and none since it went back into service. The voter who posted the video did cast her ballot which she said was correct. ...
This is what the post on Brown's Facebook page looked like on Facebook at the time of writing.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Oct 31 22:50:28 2024 UTC)
The post with the video showing a functioning voting machine is embedded below:
Kentucky Secretary of State
In a November 1, 2024, email to Lead Stories, Michon Lindstrom, director of communications for the Kentucky Secretary of State's Office, said, "We are aware of the video." She added:
It was an isolated incident that was deemed to be voter error. ... Most importantly, the voter confirmed she was able to print and cast her ballot for her intended candidate.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to the 2024 U.S. general election and other elections are here.
Updates:
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2024-11-01T18:32:10Z 2024-11-01T18:32:10Z Adds context from Kentucky Secretary of State's Office.
