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  • 2018-10-27 (xsd:date)
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  • Are Texas Voting Machines Switching People's Votes? (en)
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  • In October 2018, reports began appearing on social media that voters in Texas were seeing their votes for the hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke being switched to the opposite party when they selected the straight party (or straight ticket) option: Indeed, some voters in Texas have reported that when using the straight ticket option (i.e., automatically marking candidates from the same party for every race) on voting machines, their selections for the U.S. Senate race were either left blank or were reversed, with some Democratic voters' ballots being marked for Republican candidate Ted Cruz and some Republican voters' ballots being marked for Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke: Despite complaints from both sides about voting irregularities and accusations of election tampering, the Houston Chronicle quoted Sam Taylor, communications director for the Secretary of State, as saying that only about 15 to 20 people had complained to the state so far, and most of them reported that their ballots for the U.S. Senate race had been left blank rather than party-switched. Some of the Democratic voters who reported problems with their ballots being marked for Ted Cruz in the Senate race also noted they were able to obtain assistance in changing their votes back to what they intended. Rather than being the result of a plot by one side or the other to subvert the U.S. Senate election, these voting anomalies are a known problem that surfaced during the 2016 election with the Hart eSlate voting machines used in about a third of Texas' counties: The Texas Tribune similarly reported that state officials had characterized the issue as one of voter error rather than machine malfunction: Counties that use other brands of voting machines, such as Bexar County, have experienced complaints from voters of somwhat similar errors, primarily that when voters cast straight ticket ballots, the machines leave blank any race in which their favored party doesn’t have a candidate. Texas election officials said the cost of upgrading the machines in time for the 2018 midterms was prohibitively expensive: Even if this particular problem affecting straight ticket voting on certain machines id not resolved after the 2018 election, the issue will be moot in Texas, as the state legislature voted in 2017 to eliminate the straight party voting option beginning with the 2020 general election: (en)
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