Dominion Voting Machines didn’t switch 37 votes to Biden in Ware County, Georgia

Dominion Voting Systems, which makes election software and hardware, has been at the center of baseless claims of voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., amplified one of these claims in a Dec. 4 tweet.

"Yesterday we learned a forensics examination of a Ware County, GA #DominionVotingSystems machine found votes were switched from @realDonaldTrump to @JoeBiden," he tweeted. "This is one machine in one county in one state. Did this happen elsewhere? We need to know! EXAMINE ALL THE MACHINES!"

Yesterday we learned a forensics examination of a Ware County, GA #DominionVotingSystems machine found votes were switched from @realDonaldTrump to @JoeBiden.

This is one machine in one county in one state.

Did this happen elsewhere? We need to know!

EXAMINE ALL THE MACHINES!

— Rep. Jody Hice (@CongressmanHice) December 4, 2020

Hice’s claim misleads on several fronts. He seems to be referring to the results of a hand recount in Ware County, which changed by 37 votes from the initial vote total.

State election officials told us that the small difference between the initial count and the recount resulted from human error, not a failure of Dominion software. 

A spokesperson for Hice’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Ware County Supervisor of Elections Carlos Nelson explained that the error occurred while a worker tabulated ballots. Absentee ballots are digitally scanned in batches of 100. If a scanning machine detects a ballot with a rip or a tear, the machine stops, forcing election workers to reject the batch, fix the torn ballot, and then resubmit the 100-vote batch for tabulation.

In this case, the worker accidentally submitted the same batch twice after a flawed ballot stopped the machine, once before the ballot was fixed and once after it was fixed.

Featured Fact-check

Derrick Van Orden

stated on April 1, 2024 in X, formerly Twitter

You can vote in-person absentee at your clerk’s office on Monday before Election Day.

According to Nelson, Ware County election officials caught the error in an internal audit and quickly updated the result. The corrected numbers were affirmed during an electronic recount that the Trump campaign requested in Georgia. 

"The system worked as it was intended to work," said Nelson. "We reported the error right after the election, updated all the numbers, and there was no issue for three weeks until the narrative changed."

Gabriel Sterling, a top Georgia election official, mirrored Nelson’s claims, calling Hice’s tweet "flat-out misinformation" in a tweet. 

Hice’s claim appears to have originated in a Dec. 3 press release put out by the advocacy group Voter GA, which claims, without evidence, that the 37-vote-difference resulted from a Dominion Voting Machine, which "flipped" votes from Trump to Biden. 

The press release compares the discrepancy in the Ware County vote totals to Antrim County, Mich., where a clerk incorrectly tallied votes a day after the election. The mistake was quickly corrected, and there is no evidence that Antrim County’s inaccurate vote count was caused by Dominion technology. 

It’s unclear what forensic examination Hice was referencing. The Georgia Secretary of State’s office did conduct a forensic audit on a random sampling of Dominion voting machines, but that audit found "no signs of cyber attacks or election hacking" and "no evidence of the machines being tampered."

Nelson said that he and his office had no trouble with Dominion technology and that numbers tabulated by those machines were "spot on." 

Trump won about 70% of the votes in Ware County.

Hice said "a forensics examination" of a Ware County, Ga., Dominion Voting Systems machine found switched from Trump to Biden.

The 37-vote difference that election officials caught resulted from human error, not a flaw in Dominion software. 

A forensic audit conducted by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office on a random sampling of Dominion voting machines found "no signs of cyber attacks or election hacking" and "no evidence of the machines being tampered." 

We rate this claim False. ​