People cast their ballots during early voting on October 18, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina ( AFP / Allison Joyce)

Georgia election officials refute early vote flipping claims

Machines in the US swing state of Georgia have not been switching votes cast for Donald Trump to Kamala Harris, as conservative influencers and Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have claimed. An early voter in Whitfield County realized after printing their ballot that the wrong option was selected on a question, but election officials said the problem resulted from user error and was corrected with a new ballot.

"CHECK YOUR BALLOTS GEORGIA! Reports from Whitfield County, GA that Dominion machines are flipping votes," said Greene, who is up for reelection in Georgia, in an October 18, 2024 post.

"This is exactly the kind of fraud we saw in 2020 and it cannot be tolerated."

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Screenshot from X taken October 22, 2024

The post includes footage of Greene airing similar claims in an interview with InfoWars, the conspiratorial website run by Alex Jones. It also highlights a screenshot of a Facebook post in which an unnamed user describes a friend's voting experience and warns others to check their printed ballots.

Similar posts repeating Greene's claims and decrying the alleged "cheating" spread across X as early voting in Georgia opened with a record number of ballots cast.

"Congresswoman @RepMTG just reported that voting machines in Georgia are flipping votes for Trump to Democrats," InfoWars host Owen Shroyer said in one post.

Conservative commentator Rogan O'Handley added: "Why can’t Georgia just run a clean election?! Why are votes being changed in the machines?! ENOUGH."

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Screenshot from X taken October 22, 2024

The claims echo allegations about Dominion Voting Systemswhich makes election hardware and software, from the 2020 presidential contest. Fox News paid the firm hundreds of millions of dollars after settling a defamation lawsuit alleging the network knowingly aired false claims linking Dominion machines to a conspiracy to undermine the election.

The more recent narrative is similarly baseless.

"The false claim that voting machines can switch votes has been repeatedly debunked," Dominion said in an October 22, 2024 statement to AFP, adding that "the issue reported in Whitfield County was due to voter error."

Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state's office, confirmed that in an October 22 email.

"Voter made a mistake, mistake got corrected," he told AFP.

Voter mishap quickly resolved

In Georgia, voters make their selections via electronic ballot marking devices powered by Dominion. They then print their marked ballots, review them and insert the paper into a scanner for tabulation.

Shaynee Bryson, the supervisor of elections for Whitfield County, was in the early voting room where a voter said a machine had changed his vote.

She told AFP in an October 22 email that the issue pertained to the person's vote on a ballot question -- not the race for president or another office. In accordance with state law, she helped the voter spoil their first ballot and submit a new one while they were still on-site.

"We had to explain to the voter that when a wrong choice is made on the screen of the ballot marking device, the voter must un-check the original selection, and then check the selection which they wish to vote for," Bryson said, adding that the county has received "no other complaints" from thousands of others who have voted.

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Graphic on the US election battleground state of Georgia with previous presidential election results and percentage of population by ethnic group (AFP / Jonathan WALTER, Olivia BUGAULT, Sabrina BLANCHARD)

As the claims of vote flipping spread, the county said on Facebook that it was "aware of a Facebook post stating that a printed ballot didn't reflect the voter's selection" (archived here). 

The county's post linked to a press release explaining that the voter remarked their ballot "immediately" and cast it "with no further incident" (archived here).

"If we had reason to suspect that the machine was in error, we would have immediately taken the machine out of service," the October 19 press release says. "No machines have been taken out of service."

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, confirmed in an October 20 interview with CBS News that the mishap was a user error, saying he had not seen any evidence of fraud in the state and that voting equipment was working after being tested by various audits (archived here).

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the secretary of state's office, also posted about the incident on X.

"There is a reason we tell people to review their ballots," he said in an October 18 post (archived here). "Humans make mistakes. They're called mistakes for a reason. Anyone claiming machines are flipping votes are lying or don't research. This issue is human/user error, always will be. Whitfield Co. handled it & voter voted."

Greene appeared to walk back her claims days later, sharing the Whitfield County press release on X and thanking the jurisdiction for its transparency (archived here).

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the election here.

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