With around two weeks to go until Election Day in 2024, online users shared a rumor claiming a Texas county experienced issues with voting machines "flipping" votes from Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump over to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Beginning on Oct. 21, 2024, users shared a video showing interviews with two men in the town of White Settlement, Texas. The town is located in Tarrant County — the state's third-most-populous county, which includes Fort Worth.
However, local Democratic and Republican officials publicly clarified the rumor's overblown nature, saying that the matter involved a single person out of more than 100,000 people reporting the purported voting irregularity. Further, Tarrant County elections administrator Clint Ludwig said in a video statement that his office believed the matter involved human error.
The Video Interviews
One prominent example of a user sharing this rumor originated from the @BehizyTweets account on X. On Oct. 21, the user posted the two video interviews (archived), writing in part, "BREAKING: Voters in Tarrant County, Texas are reporting that the voting machines are flipping their votes from Trump to Kamala Harris. The voters are urging everyone else to check their printed ballots before submitting them." The post received around 9 million views. Other users made similar claims.
In the video, a man identifying himself as James Carpenter said, "I voted for one president. Checked it on the video screen. When I got the paper ballot, it had the other candidate's name on it."
The second man — identifying himself as Lucas Clark — said, "There were two people that came out and said that their ballots were changed." Clark did not say he experienced issues with his own ballot. We did not find contact information for Carpenter but did send a message to Clark via Messenger asking if he had any information regarding the two people he referenced, as local officials said they received only one report of a voter claiming to have experienced a problem. We will update this story if we receive a response.
Dallas-based WFAA-TV reported a woman named Jess Glover recorded the two video interviews (archived).
Tarrant County GOP Chairman: 'Rumors of 'Widespread' Irregularities Are Not True'
In the post from the @BehizyTweets account on X — someone who previously shared at least one misleading claim about U.S. elections — the user also mentioned a post from Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French, specifically saying that French had posted on Oct 21 (archived), "Reports were that people who selected Trump on the screen were seeing Harris on the printed ballot."
However, two days later, on Oct. 23, French posted that "rumors of 'widespread' irregularities are not true." His post did not mention any voter by name (archived), and read:
So far in Tarrant County, we have seen record turnout. Through 2 days of early voting, 116,000 people have voted in person. One person had an issue. Rumors of "widespread" irregularities are not true. That said, I strongly encourage all voters to check their ballots before submitting them. That is just common sense.
Tarrant County Elections Administrator Clarifies Rumor
In a video message posted on X on Oct. 22 (archived), Ludwig, the Tarrant County elections administrator, said he believed the singular reported issue involved human error. He also said the voter — whom he did not name — filled out a new ballot and that an official invalidated the older ballot in a process known as spoiling.
Ludwig said:
We've had almost 102,000 people show up to polls to cast their votes so far during early voting. During that time, we have one individual who's claimed that the vote that they selected on the machine was not the vote that was printed on the printed ballot.
What we believe to have occurred is the individual did make a selection on the machine, and that selection was printed on their ballot. When they went to cast their ballot, they checked it and realized that was not the vote that they wanted.
This is not uncommon and there's a practice in place called spoiling the ballot to handle this. The individual notified the lead clerk that they needed to spoil their ballot and he was issued a new ballot and able to vote. Knowing this, you may vote with confidence in Tarrant County.
Democratic and Republican Officials Speak on Rumor
In Fort Worth-based KXAS-TV's reporting on this rumor (archived), the news station interviewed Alisa Simmons, Tarrant County Commissioner for Precinct 2, as well as the county's top executive, County Judge Tim O'Hare. Simmons associates herself with the Democratic Party, while O'Hare is a member of the Republican Party.
Simmons told KXAS of the claim of a voting machine switching a vote from one U.S. presidential candidate to another, "There is no indication. There is zero evidence that that has occurred."
Acording to the station, O'Hare said, "They did some fairly rigorous testing. Again, out of 58,000 votes cast, this is the only person who's come forward and made such a claim."
Officials with Simmons' and O'Hare's offices told Snopes they were unaware of any further reports of voters making claims of ballot irregularities.