Video of voting machine ‘switching’ vote to Republican is misleading and outdated

In late October, people claimed a video showed a touch screen voting machine “changing” a vote for a Democratic candidate to that of the Republican challenger in this year’s U.S. midterm elections.

The clip circulated as part of a widespread false rumor alleging voting machines in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and other states have deliberately changed voters’ candidate choices.

In the video, a person attempts to select Tobi Beck, a Democrat, but the screen displays an “X” to mark Jim Baird, a Republican.

For example, on Oct. 21, a Facebook user posted the video (archived) with the caption, “Warning! Seriously! Voting machines across the country are changing votes. Someone records this video of exactly what is happening.”

Others reposted the same clip, calling the issue a “glitch” or a “rigging” of the election, on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).

In sum, this video appeared genuine in that it did not display any signs of artificial intelligence or other digital fakery. However, the clip was reportedly recorded during the 2018 midterms, not this year, at a polling place in Indiana’s Tippecanoe County, with Democratic and Republican officials chalking up such matters to improper touch screen calibration. As such, we’ve rated this claim as miscaptioned.

Mike Smith, an elections specialist working for the Tippecanoe County Board of Elections & Registration, told Snopes, “Like many jurisdictions, Tippecanoe County is experiencing a coordinated attack of misinformation and disinformation in an unfortunate attempt by bad actors to undermine voter confidence in the election process.” He labeled allegations of vote switching as “patently false” and called the old video “deceptive” and “misleading.”

What social media posts failed to clarify

On Election Day 2018, the Lafayette, Indiana, Journal & Courier reported on the video, identified the person who purportedly recorded it and cited officials who said the issue had arisen days earlier during early voting.

The story said Christa Coffey, then the county clerk, received seven formal reports on the first day of early voting without specifying whether those seven people were able to ultimately correctly submit their chosen selections on a ballot. Democratic and Republican officials reportedly checked on the matter and did not find any sort of widespread or deliberate voting issues.

The article quoted the county’s Democratic Party chairwoman as saying she didn’t believe “maliciousness” was involved and that the problem involved poor calibration:

On Tuesday, Heather Maddox, Tippecanoe County Democratic Party chairwoman, said she was frustrated over the situation.

“I think you could have anticipated this, with what happened earlier,” Maddox said. “I don’t think there’s any maliciousness involved, believe me, I don’t. It’s a calibration thing. But people have to feel confident in the equipment, and they didn’t in this case.”

Coffey reportedly advised voters to use the “review ballot” summary on the final page of the voting process and to raise any questions with poll workers.

We emailed Julie Roush, the current county clerk, to ask for further details about the 2018 touch screen voting machine issues and will update this story if we receive more information.

Baird, the Republican candidate for U.S. House, defeated Beck, the Democrat, by a wide margin in the state’s 4th Congressional District race in 2018.

Indiana has since added a paper trail feature to the voting process, defined as “a security measure that allows voters to independently verify their vote was correctly recorded.”