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Fast Take
A video displaying a Laurel County, Kentucky, voter having issue marking a poll for former President Donald Trump was investigated and located to be an “remoted incident” of “voter error,” a spokesperson for the secretary of state mentioned. Social media posts baselessly claimed it was an instance of “election interference.”
Full Story
All through his 2024 election bid, former President Donald Trump has baselessly questioned the integrity of U.S. elections. There isn’t any proof that Trump’s defeat in 2020 was because of fraud or dishonest, as we have written. State and federal judges have rejected Trump’s claims, usually saying that his authorized crew offered no proof of fraud. Election security officials on the time known as the 2020 election “essentially the most safe in American historical past.”
However bogus claims of 2024 election interference persisted as voters throughout the nation started to forged their ballots.
In a series of posts on Instagram, customers falsely characterize a viral video as proof of pervasive fraud. The video depicts a voter in Laurel County, Kentucky, repeatedly making an attempt to pick the Republican presidential ticket, Trump and Sen. JD Vance, however the poll marking gadget as a substitute signifies a vote for the Democratic ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.
One post misleadingly reported, “BREAKING: Voter machines in Kentucky are mechanically deciding on ‘Harris-Walz’ regardless of voter’s NUMEROUS makes an attempt to pick ‘Trump-Vance.’”
“Share this and tag each consultant you possibly can consider. That is election interference at its best and that’s a CRIME,” one other put up claimed.
A 3rd put up baselessly described the video for example of extra in depth interference nationwide: “Folks within the feedback all around the nation are saying the identical factor occurred to them. How many individuals didn’t discover and moved on to their subsequent choice?”
Native and state officers mounted a rapid response to the Oct. 31 incident, which the Laurel County voter reported to election officers at her polling location.
Michon Lindstrom, a spokesperson for Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, instructed us in an e mail that this was an “remoted incident” of “voter error,” not proof of election interference. Adams is a Republican who won reelection final 12 months.
“The poll marking gadget was eliminated and the Lawyer Normal’s workplace is trying on the machine out of an abundance of warning,” Lindstrom mentioned.
The Laurel County voter liable for the video in the end deposited a poll containing her desired choices, the State Board of Elections mentioned in a Nov. 1 statement.
Greater than 1,700 individuals in Laurel County participated in in-person absentee voting on Oct. 31, and “neither the State Board of Elections nor the Laurel County Clerk had been made conscious of another studies of points with the county’s [ballot marking devices and scanners] on that day,” the board mentioned in its assertion.
“In line with statements made by the voter to the County Clerk, the voter was in a position to in the end use the touchscreen appropriately to spotlight the sector for Donald Trump and each different one among her most well-liked candidates,” the board additionally mentioned.
System Permits for Reviewing Picks
The device featured within the video was an Election Systems & Software (ES&S) ExpressVote poll marking gadget, or BMD. The gadget doesn’t electronically tabulate votes. As an alternative, voters should make choices for every race on the BMD display, print their accomplished ballots, then insert their ballots into an ES&S DS-200 scanner to formally file their choices.
Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown explained in an Oct. 31 Fb post, “You insert your clean poll into [the BMD]. … It exhibits you who you’ve got chosen for every race and notifies you in case you didn’t select in a race earlier than it permits the voter to proceed to the following web page. While you come to the tip of the poll it exhibits you the way you voted in each race and problem. It confirms with every voter that they’re glad with their choices twice earlier than printing the poll.”
“When you obtain your poll again from the poll marking gadget you possibly can evaluate your selections once more earlier than putting it into the scanner,” Brown continued. “When you made a mistake, you could spoil that poll and obtain one other one[.] Kentucky Legislation permits two spoiled ballots solely. As soon as you’re glad together with your poll you could place it into the scanner, and it verifies that it has been counted.”
Upon receiving information of the Oct. 31 incident, the BMD was “set face down” within the vote heart till a consultant of the Kentucky attorney general’s office arrived, Brown reported on Facebook.
“After a number of minutes of making an attempt to recreate the state of affairs [in the video], it did happen,” Brown wrote. “This was completed by hitting some space in between the bins. After that we tried for a number of minutes to do it once more and couldn’t.” Investigators used the identical BMD from the video when making an attempt to recreate the state of affairs.
Brown posted a further video to Facebook on Nov. 1 with tricks to efficiently navigate Laurel County BMDs. The State Board of Elections recommends that voters use a finger or stylus to make choices “inside the center of the sector allotted for that candidate or response.”
Voters in Kentucky can report poll points to the election officers at their polling location after which name the lawyer common’s election hotline, 1-800-328-VOTE.
Lindstrom, the secretary of state spokesperson, mentioned Kentucky conducts post-election audits, which contain hand recounts of ballots.
“All Kentucky voters can trust that our elections are safe and any potential points will likely be addressed shortly,” Lawyer Normal Russell Coleman, a Republican, said on X.
Editor’s notice: FactCheck.org is one among a number of organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our earlier tales may be discovered here. Fb has no control over our editorial content material.
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