Fact Check: Virginia Voting Machine Did NOT Misspell Donald Trump’s Name On Paper Ballots — Typo Only On Optional Review Screen
Did a Virginia voting machine ballot include an ‘i’ in Donald Trump’s last name, as a video on social media displays? No, that’s not true: The misspelling of the presidential candidate’s name appears only on an optional ballot review screen — not on the paper ballot itself — in Washington County, Virginia. The director of elections there told Lead Stories that the typographical error on the screen “will have no effect on anyone’s vote.”
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) posted on X, formerly Twitter, on October 28, 2024. The caption read:
Attention!
This voter in Virginia got video footage of her election machine.
Why is there an ‘I’ in Donald Trump’s name?
Is this some sort of election interference?
👀🚨
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct 30 19:55:05 2024 UTC)
The post provided no evidence to support its assertion that a Virginia voting machine ballot misspelled Donald Trump’s name or that there were grounds to suspect possible election interference.
The video
The video indeed shows the former president’s name is incorrectly spelled as “Triump” about 19 seconds into the short clip. It’s circled in yellow in the screenshot below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct 30 19:55:05 2024 UTC)
The Virginia Project, which describes itself on X as a “Republican political action committee for normal Americans,” posted on X (archived here) on October 28, 2024, that it had traced the video to Washington County, Virginia. It described the matter as “closed/resolved …”
Washington County director of elections
The video shows an “optional ballot review screen” that voters can request if they want to double-check their choices before submitting their paper ballot to the ballot-scanning device at the polling place.
Derek Lyall, director of elections for Washington County, Virginia (archived here), told Lead Stories in an October 30, 2024, email that everyone in Washington County casts their votes on paper ballots and that all of the candidate’s names are spelled correctly on them. The Washington County government website provides a link to a sample ballot (archived here) for the election. The image below shows Trump’s name (circled in black) without any typos on the sample ballot:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Oct 29 16:07:23 2024 UTC)
Lyall’s email also provided the details behind the misspelling of Trump’s name:
We discovered last week that there is a typographical error on an optional ballot review screen on our voting equipment. The ballot review screen is only activated if a voter requests it before inserting their ballot. The review screen displays the choices that the voter selected on their paper ballot.
Out of 10,000+ voters who have cast their ballots in Washington County, fewer than twenty voters have requested to utilize this optional ballot review screen.
Lyall said that by the time the error was identified, it was too late to reprogram the voting equipment for the November 5, 2024, election. He continued:
All of our voting equipment has been thoroughly tested. Our equipment is operating as designed and is tabulating ballots in accordance with voters’ choices. The single typographical error on the optional ballot review screen will have no effect on anyone’s vote.
On Election Day, a notice will be posted in each of our polling places advising voters of this error.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election can be read here.
