Voting machines select wrong candidate in Mississippi election, videos show
Some Mississippi voters in Tuesday’s primary runoff election chose one candidate on touch-screen voting machines only to have the other candidate selected, a video shared on social media shows.
Tuesday’s runoff will decide which Republican candidate for governor will go up against Jim Hood, a Democrat who currently serves as state attorney general, in November.
There were problems in at least two precincts, where electronic voting machines selected the wrong candidate, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
The videos show voters trying to select Bill Waller on the touch-screens, but the machine reads the selection for the other candidate, Tate Reeves.
“Regardless of who you vote for, make sure your vote is cast correctly. This happened to me this morning. As soon as the screen appeared, Reeves name was already marked. I started videoing after that. A poll worker said it happened to her as well. I ended up tapping the ‘x’ to get it to clear, then I was able to cast my vote for Waller, Jr.,” Ethan Peterson said on Facebook, sharing a video of what happened.
Primary elections are run by the political parties, and counties own the voting machines, Anna Moak with the Secretary of State’s Office told WAPT.
“Our office was made aware this morning that one TSX machine was malfunctioning in the Republican Primary at the Burgess precinct in Lafayette County. We contacted the county. The county dispatched a technician to the precinct and the tablet is being replaced. To our knowledge, only one machine was malfunctioning. Apparently 19 votes were cast prior to the error being detected,” Moak told the station.
Lafayette County election officials told WMC-TV the machine had been tested Friday but had lost its proper calibration after likely being mishandled.
This story was originally published August 27, 2019 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Voting machines select wrong candidate in Mississippi election, videos show."
