No, Voting Machines Aren't "Flipping" Ballots in the 2026 Midterms — It's the Same Recycled Panic Since 2018

Every affected Tennessee and Texas county uses ES&S ExpressVote ballot-marking devices, which print a paper ballot that the voter reviews before it is cast — the opposite of a system built to secretly alter votes undetected ^[1][2].

Tennessee's Coordinator of Elections, Mark Goins, called the reports "voter error," most likely an unintended touch, noting equipment is tested beforehand and styluses are available on request. The state received exactly one such complaint out of roughly 400,000 ballots already cast ^[1][2].

Bexar County Elections Administrator Michele Carew said mismatches are "almost always due to user touchscreen sensitivity, not machine malfunction," adding the machines are never connected to the internet ^[2]. Texas Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Alicia Pierce said she was unaware of any such reports statewide and noted any affected machine "must produce a human-readable paper ballot that a voter can review before casting" ^[2].

ES&S spokesperson Katina Granger told PolitiFact the company has received no widespread reports from election officials, called the incidents "rare," and said: "There is no scenario in which a voter would be forced to cast a ballot that they believe did not reflect their intentions" ^[2].

Two of the "proof" clips being shared as 2026 footage are recycled from earlier elections. An Oct. 23 video is actually from Mississippi's 2019 Republican gubernatorial primary, showing candidates Tate Reeves and Bill Waller Jr. ^[1][2]; The Blaze's original 2019 report on that clip found officials in two counties attributed the glitch to machine miscalibration, not rigging, after a voter trying to select Waller watched the screen repeatedly mark Reeves instead ^[5]. A second video, shared Oct. 22, is from a 2018 Indiana U.S. House race between Jim Baird and Tobi Beck ^[1][2].

This isn't the first time the identical claim has gone viral — it recurs almost every election cycle. In 2024, a near-identical video from Laurel County, Kentucky, appearing to show a touchscreen switching a Trump vote to Kamala Harris, drew tens of millions of views ^[3][4].

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said flatly: "There is no 'vote-switching.'" Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown confirmed the voter's final printed ballot matched their intent, and election workers could reproduce the glitch only once, after deliberately tapping between option boxes, and never again afterward ^[4].

Media Matters found that 2024 video was amplified by Joe Rogan, Nick Sortor, The Gateway Pundit, True the Vote and several QAnon-linked accounts, racking up millions of additional views beyond the original clip ^[3].

The pattern is consistent: a real but isolated touchscreen miscalibration, caught and corrected through the machine's own paper-ballot review step, gets stripped of context and recirculated years later as fresh proof of rigging. That is exactly what is happening again heading into the 2026 midterms ^[1][2][3].

FALSE. No election official, independent security researcher, or the machines' own vendor has found evidence that any voting machine is systematically switching votes in the 2026 midterms ^[1][2][3]. The reported incidents are isolated, caught by the paper-ballot review step built into every affected machine, and traced to screen calibration or imprecise touches — not hacking or reprogramming ^[1][2].

Several of the viral "proof" clips are literally old news repurposed from 2018, 2019 and 2024 elections ^[1][2][5]. Voters who notice a mismatch should check the review screen and the printed paper ballot before casting, and flag any discrepancy to a poll worker immediately ^[1][2].