Video of Malfunctioning Kentucky Voting Machine Is Authentic — But Requires Context
A video posted to social media authentically shows a Kentucky voting machine not allowing a voter to select Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump.
The video in question does show a Kentucky voter attempting to select former U.S. President Donald Trump and the machine not letting them. The machine eventually selects Vice President Kamala Harris instead. According to a Laurel County clerk, this was a malfunction.
The device in the video is not a voting tabulation machine, but rather a ballot marking machine that allows voters to make their selections on a screen before the machine prints a physical ballot reflecting those selections, which is then fed into the tabulation machine. The Laurel County clerk said the device in question was removed from service until it was inspected. They also said voters have multiple opportunities to make sure their selections are correct before turning in their ballots. The voter in the video was able to cast a ballot with their correct selections.
In November 2024, a widely shared post on X allegedly showed a voting machine not allowing a voter to select the Republican presidential ticket of former U.S. President Donald Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The post sharing the video asked, “Has this been explained yet? Are they cheating?”
The video originally went viral after being posted to TikTok in late October 2024.
In the video, a voter attempts to select Trump but the machine initially doesn’t respond. Eventually it registers a selection of the box for the Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
The video was widely shared on X, with one post receiving more than 2.5 million views and nearly 24,000 shares as of this writing. That user added, “Why does this always seem [to] happen in one direction and not the other?”
A different person sharing the video on X said, “Reason #80 million to switch to paper and ban voting machines for good.”
While the video in question was authentic and the machine indeed malfunctioned, it was not a voting machine that tabulates votes directly. Rather, it was a ballot marking device that asks the voter to make their selections on the screen and then prints a physical ballot for use in tabulation. For this reason, we’ve rated this claim as a mixture of true and false.
Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown said in a statement posted on Facebook:
The Attorney General’s office has been to the vote center to check the device that has been shown across social media today. In full disclosure, after several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario, it did occur. This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not.
The initial statement continued as follows:
This is the same machine used by the voter in the video. It remained at its location in the vote center and was set face down until the representative from the Attorney General’s Office arrived to investigate. There were no claims of any issues with the device prior, and none since it went back into service. The voter who posted the video did cast her ballot which she said was correct.
Brown also posted a video explaining how the ballot marking device works. Essentially, a voter inserts their paper ballot into the machine, makes their selections on the screen, which then prints the appropriate selections on the physical ballot the voter will then turn in for tabulation.
The clerk explained:
It shows you who you have chosen for each race and notifies you if you didn’t make a selection in a race before it allows the voter to continue to the next page. When you come to the end of the ballot it shows you how you voted in every race and issue. It confirms with each voter that they are satisfied with their selections twice before printing the ballot. Once you receive your ballot back from the ballot marking device you can review your choices again before placing it into the scanner. If you made a mistake, you may spoil that ballot and receive another one, Kentucky Law allows two spoiled ballots only. Once you are satisfied with your ballot you may place it into the scanner, and it verifies that it has been counted.
In addition, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman posted on X:
The Kentucky Attorney General’s Department of Criminal Investigations (DCI) quickly responded to the complaint from Laurel County. Detectives have been in touch with the county clerk and recommended they change out the voting machine. All Kentucky voters can have confidence that our elections are secure and any potential issues will be addressed quickly.
Coleman also released a statement via the official Kentucky website and said, “Every Kentuckian can be confident in the security and integrity of our elections. Our dedicated team of investigators, prosecutors and support staff is working tirelessly to protect every vote. We encourage anyone who suspects election law violations to contact the Attorney General’s Election Fraud Hotline.”
Further, Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams reposted a news article about the malfunction and said, “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 t***s.”
The secretary of state was referring to a popular conservative X account that has 3 million followers. The account reposted another account sharing the claim and said, “Funny how this always just goes one way, isn’t it?”
Snopes has reached out to the Laurel County clerk to determine whether there have been any other reports of ballot marking machines malfunctioning and will update this article when we hear back. Similar reports from Kentucky surfaced in 2023.
Snopes has covered a wide variety of voter fraud claims related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, including how delayed vote totals don’t indicate that voter fraud is happening, whether large numbers of noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections and whether using a Sharpie marker invalidates ballots.
