Voting machine malfunctions are typical, not evidence of ‘stealing’ the election

Conspiratorial-sounding posts spreading on Election Day claimed that instances of broken or locked voting machines in a handful of polling locations across the country are signs of cheating.

On Twitter, the posts were accompanied by the hashtag #StoptheSteal. The claims sometimes note that malfunctions happened in districts that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016.

These posts are exaggerated. They omit that minor glitches at the polls are typical, and in most of the examples we found voting machines were restored quickly. We have seen no evidence or reports of persistent, widespread issues that kept people from voting in person.

A video from Brooklyn, N.Y., on Twitter appeared to show broken and locked voting machines early in the morning. 

".@BOENYC 1 machine is down, the other is locked in #Brooklyn district that voted overwhelmingly for @realDonaldTrump in 2016," the tweet reads.

The New York City board of elections responded to the tweet by saying the malfunction was resolved shortly after 8 a.m. Board spokesperson Valerie Vazquez-Diaz told PolitiFact two issues at polling places were resolved in the morning, and that they haven’t seen any widespread problems.

Another video clip shared on Twitter showed a Scranton, Pa., polling location that was experiencing issues with machines and a poll worker telling voters they could wait, come back later, or put their ballot in the emergency slot of each machine for it to be scanned later.

We haven’t heard back from the local election officials who oversee operations in Scranton. One blog shared the same video, and noted that voting machines at the Scranton Cultural Center weren’t accepting paper ballots. 

The York Daily Record newspaper reported that a Lackawanna County elections staff worker called the problem "very minor," and it was "resolved quickly." Officials told USA Today that the issue was fixed by 9:30 a.m., hours before the tweet was posted.

In an interview with NBC, Chris Patrick, the county’s Democratic Committee chair, said there were a couple of problems in the morning, and one polling location had to be shut down temporarily. He also noted that officials were able to extend the hours at two polling places at the John Kennedy School. 

James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, a conservative group with a history of using hidden cameras and selectively edited videos, tweeted that the organization was told by a voter in Greenville, S.C., that she waited for hours to vote before being told that "the scanners were ‘broken’ and the votes would be ‘tabulated later.’ She said her ballot was then tossed in a barrel with other ballots."

Greenville County did experience about a dozen scanner issues that were fixed, director of elections Conway Belangia told PolitiFact. 

"Our procedure is, if the scanner jams and voters have already printed their ballot, we put it into a holding bin that is secured and sealed," Belangia said. "And at the end of the night, the polls workers and watchers will open up that bin and then scan those ballots through so they are properly counted and are put into the ballot box."

Belangia said this has been the procedure statewide since it started using the scanners about a year ago.

These types of glitches — while worrisome and frustrating to voters who experience them — are largely considered routine.

The Election Protection coalition, administered by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, provides a helpline for voters to ask questions and report issues. Its Twitter account has noted extensions at some voting locations throughout the day, but hasn’t flagged any major issues.

David Becker, executive director at the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, told PolitiFact that it’s quite common to see social media claims about voting machine malfunctions in every election. Almost all of them, he said, are either active attempts at disinformation, or misunderstanding about how the machines work. 

"In my opinion, we’ve actually seen fewer such claims this year, compared to the two most recent federal elections," Becker said. 

Officials say that the record number of people who voted early, which topped 100 million, has also made it easier to deal with any issues.