Instagram publish
Assertion: “Voting machines in Pennsylvania are actually being shut down after stories of machines ‘flipping votes.’ ”
An Election Day glitch in jap Pennsylvania has some social media customers declaring it proof that your entire nation’s election system is corrupt.
Textual content on a Nov. 8 Instagram publish stated, “Are U.S. elections compromised?”
Under that, the publish shared a screenshot of an X post from conservative commentator Benny Johnson that stated, “Voting machines in Pennsylvania are actually being shut down after stories of machines ‘flipping votes.’ And because of this People have misplaced all religion in our electoral course of.
“Add this to the listing of election fraud instances we’ve not too long ago discovered about,” Johnson’s publish stated.
The Instagram publish was flagged as a part of Meta’s efforts to fight false information and misinformation on its information feed.
(Learn extra about our partnership with Meta, which owns Fb and Instagram.)
This publish offers a deceptive impression of what occurred on Election Day in Pennsylvania.
Some voters in Northampton County, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia, reported seeing voting machines seem to change their votes in two judicial races. However native voting rights advocates who reviewed the matter stated they discovered no indication of election fraud.
Voters statewide had been requested to resolve whether or not two sitting Superior Courtroom judges, Democrat Jack Panella and Republican Victor Stabile, ought to retain their positions for 10 extra years. Voters may choose “sure” or “no” for every candidate. Panella and Stabile weren’t working in opposition to one another; each had been in search of a further time period.
Nonetheless, Northampton County officers discovered {that a} voting machine programming error triggered votes for the 2 judges to seem switched when voters’ poll selections had been printed. For instance, if a voter marked “sure” for Panella and “no” for Stabile, the printed abstract learn “no” for Panella and “sure” for Stabile.
Northampton County authorities officers stated that regardless of this printer output error, their evaluate of the matter discovered the voting machines’ backend system recorded voters’ selections precisely and all votes had been tabulated correctly.
“What you learn (on paper) and what the pc reads are two various things. The pc doesn’t learn the textual content that’s printed out,” Northampton County Administration Director Charles Dertinger, who oversees the elections division, stated throughout a Nov. 7 press convention.
Election Programs & Software program, the corporate that made the ExpressXL voting machines, took duty for the error. Linda Bennett, the corporate’s senior vp of buyer operations, stated on the press convention that “a clerical labeling error that was made by an ES&S worker” triggered the printed abstract to point out the mistaken vote choice.
The county briefly took the voting machines offline Election Day morning when the problem arose. After acquiring a court docket order, the county was permitted to proceed utilizing the machines so long as voters had been knowledgeable of the problem.
Pennsylvania’s State Division stated this challenge affected just some voters in Northampton County, and solely these two judicial seat questions. No different statewide races had been affected, the division stated.
As of Nov. 10, the state’s unofficial election outcomes present each Panella and Stabile retaining their Superior Courtroom seats, every with a margin of a whole lot of hundreds of votes. About 60,000 votes had been forged for these races in Northampton County.
5 native voting rights advocacy teams, together with Widespread Trigger Pennsylvania and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, known as the incident “an unlucky state of affairs brought on by human error,” however stated it didn’t quantity to election fraud.
“It is a programming error that’s being weaponized for disinformation functions,” Philip Hensley-Robin, government director of Widespread Trigger Pennsylvania, informed PolitiFact.
The voting rights teams urged election officers to research the voting machine error and make adjustments to make sure comparable errors don’t happen in future elections.
We charge the declare that this occasion of Pennsylvania voting machines “flipping votes” is proof of “election fraud” False.
Our sources
- Instagram publish, Nov. 8, 2023
- X post, Nov. 7, 2023
- Electronic mail interview with Dera Silvestre, Widespread Trigger Pennsylvania spokesperson, Nov. 9, 2023
- YouTube, “Northampton County Election Day Press Convention,” Nov. 7, 2023
- Pennsylvania Division of State, “Secretary of State Reviews Easy Election Day Throughout Commonwealth, With Restricted Variety of Remoted Points,” Nov. 7, 2023
- Pennsylvania Division of State, “Unofficial 2023 election outcomes,” Nov. 10, 2023
- Northampton County court docket order, Nov. 7, 2023
- Verified Voting, “Voting Gear Database – ES&S ExpressVote XL,” accessed Nov. 10, 2023
- The Related Press, “Posts misrepresent voting machine error in Pennsylvania county as proof of ‘rigged’ elections,” Nov. 8, 2023
