No, Tarrant County, Texas, voting machines are not changing Donald Trump votes for Kamala Harris

More than 2 million voters have already cast ballots in Texas during early voting but, viral social media posts claim voting machines in one county are flipping people’s votes.

"For anyone voting in Tarrant County please triple check your paper ballots when voting!" an Oct. 22 Facebook post said. "Voters are voting for one candidate and the ballot is changing the vote to another candidate." The post included an X post screenshot that made more pointed claims. 

"BREAKING: Voters in Tarrant County, Texas are reporting that the voting machines are flipping their votes from Trump to Kamala Harris," the Oct. 21 X post said.

We found similar viral claims on Facebook and Instagram.

The Facebook and Instagram posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads and Instagram.)

The claim originated from a voter named James Carpenter in White Settlement, Tarrant County, Texas. Carpenter claims his choice of former President Donald Trump came out changed to Vice President Kamala Harris when a voting machine printed his ballot. He told reporters he raised concerns to poll workers who offered him the chance to spoil his ballot and vote again.

The viral posts purport that multiple people have reported the same issue with their ballots, but so far only Carpenter's account has been reported by local news and addressed by election officials. 

Clint Ludwig, the county’s elections administrator, said in a video statement published Oct. 22 that nearly 102,000 people had cast early voting ballots. Ludwig said his office did not believe the machine changed the voter’s selection and suggested that the voter had made a mistake.

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"What we believe to have occurred is that the individual did make a selection on the machine and that selection was printed on their ballot," Ludwig, who did not mention Carpenter by name, said. "When they went to cast their ballot, they checked it and realized that was not the vote that they wanted … He was issued a new ballot and able to vote." 

In a separate statement, the Tarrant County elections office said it "has no reason to believe that votes are being switched by the voting system." The statement said it encourages voters to verify the marked choices on the printed ballot before scanning for counting. The incident has been reported to the Texas secretary of state.

Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare, a Republican, backed the election office’s statement. "Make sure you are careful when you are pressing your choices, make sure you review it, make sure when you print it, you thoroughly review it when you cast it," O’Hare said in an interview with NBC 5 (KXAS-TV) News, which covers the Dallas-Fort Worth region. "I believe people should have confidence that votes are not being switched." 

The Texas Republican Party assured voters in an X post "their votes are being accurately recorded and counted."

Carpenter rejected the suggestion that he made a mistake with his first ballot.  "I did not press the wrong candidate. I don’t know how to respond to that," he told CBS Texas (KTVT-TV).

Tarrant County uses Texas-based Hart InterCivic’s voting machines, which are one of two voting systems Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, a Republican, has approved for use. The Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency, also certified the machines.

We contacted the county’s election department but received no reply. 

We saw similar claims that machines messed with votes during the 2020 election, and these claims have resurfaced in 2024. They were not true then, and they are not true now. On Oct. 23, we rated a recent claim of machines vote flipping in Georgia by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Pants on Fire, and on Oct. 24, we rated social media claims of machines vote flipping in Tennesee Pants on Fire! 

Machines aren't flipping votes in Texas, either, so we rate the claim that they changed Trump votes to Harris in Tarrant County Pants on Fire!