Elections Supervisor Shaynee Bryson was in the early voting room at the Whitfield County Courthouse last week when a middle-aged man claimed that a voting machine had “flipped” his vote.
The voter said the voting machine changed his vote on a ballot question — not a presidential candidate. Election officials couldn’t substantiate the allegation, and the voter filled out a new ballot without any further problems Wednesday.
But the story spread with help from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome, who said voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were “switching” votes from Donald Trump.
Bryson said Monday that she’s careful not to accuse voters of making mistakes or misstatements, but it’s possible that the voter made the wrong selection on the touchscreen. Georgia’s ballot includes three statewide ballot questions, all dealing with taxes.
“He approved his second ballot and put it in the scanner, and he seemed very satisfied with the solution,” said Bryson, who oversees elections in the North Georgia county with 64,000 registered voters. “We don’t want to point fingers at a specific voter. We’re just here to help.”
Among other claims, Trump supporters have said that the 2020 election was stolen because of voting machine errors, but vote-flipping has never been found. Three vote counts showed that Trump lost to Joe Biden by about 12,000 votes.
Greene promoted the allegation of voting machine problems to her pro-Trump audience on social media and during an interview with Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who runs the Infowars media platform.
“This voter’s printed ballot had been changed from their selections made on the machine. Good thing they checked their paper ballot before turning it in!” Greene wrote on X.
Bryson helped the voter cancel his first ballot and fill out a new one. The voter could have corrected his first ballot before printing it if he had first unchecked his original choice and then picked a different option, Bryson said.
Neither this voter nor any other Whitfield County voter has spoiled more than one ballot this year, and no one else has alleged their votes were flipped, Bryson said. Other voters who spoiled their ballot acknowledged making the incorrect selection on the touchscreen.
Dominion, which won a $787.5 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, has fought allegations of fraud.
“The false claim that voting machines can switch votes has been repeatedly debunked. As both state and local election authorities have confirmed, the issue reported in Whitfield County was due to voter error,” Dominion wrote on its website.
Voters should review their ballots after they’re printed by touchscreens to ensure they’re correct before inserting them into scanning machines, said Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office.
“There is a reason we tell people to review their ballots. Humans make mistakes. They’re called mistakes for a reason,” Sterling said. “This issue is human/user error, always will be.”
Greene appeared to back off her previous allegations Monday, thanking Whitfield County’s elections office for its transparency and said she’d fight “to make sure our elections are secure and no votes are stolen.”
Voters can feel confident their ballots are recorded accurately, Bryson said. Out of 8,600 early voters in Whitfield County through Monday afternoon, no one else had complained about voting machine errors.
“The machines have been tested. There are checks and balances during voting. They all have to get us the result that everything turned out correctly, and it always does,” Bryson said.
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