LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. (LEX 18) — A ballot marking device is now under inspection by the Attorney General’s office after it malfunctioned during early voting on Thursday in Laurel County.
A video of the issue was posted to social media and quickly began circulating. It shows a voter at the ballot marking device trying to click on “Trump,” but “Harris” being selected instead.
“Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I look at things and I saw the video already that showed that votes were being changed,” said Jama Harris, who voted early during a lunch break on Friday.
According to the county clerk, the issue was immediately addressed and the machine taken down.
“We went over there, we checked the machine, started looking at it, going through the process to see if everything was working, and it was working,” said Brown.
Then, the Attorney General’s office was notified of the issue.
“The AG’s office came, they looked over it and said 'I don't see anything going on with it.’ He got it to do it one time, and I mean, we were operating it for 20-30 minutes, he got it to do it one time hitting on the side,” said Brown.
The machine was turned over to the Attorney General’s office for further examination, and the voter who took the video confirmed that the ballot she placed through the tabulator had the candidates selected that she intended to vote for.
According to Brown, voters should always double check their ballot before placing it in the scanner.
“Even if you print the ballot and look at it and say, 'Oh that's wrong, I didn't wanna vote that,' you can spoil the ballot and get another one," Brown said.
Even so, some voters still went to the polls with caution, for one reason or another.
“There's not enough security, I don't feel like, that’s watching people trying to get people to vote for other parties,” said voter Andrew Mills.
“Not here in this county, but I'm afraid in the larger cities, I do believe there will be voter fraud. I believe there always has been,” said voter Betty White.
In a final word of advice for skeptical voters, Brown said, “It's up to you to make sure that's what you have on your ballot.”
Secretary of State Michael Adams responded to the rumors circulating on social media claiming the malfunction was intentional vote-switching.
He said on X, “There is no ‘vote-switching'. The voter confirmed that her ballot was correctly printed as marked for the candidate of her choice. Get your voting information from legitimate sources, not TikTok or cat turds.”
