Stella Parton, an artist and sister of the late Dolly Parton, said she recently had to correct her vote for governor three times while using a voting machine at an early voting site in Nashville.
Parton’s issue — and concerns that voting machines are changing votes — arise nearly every election, though election officials and experts say it’s nearly always due to accidental touches on voting machines, and not something nefarious.
“In Tennessee last week at the Hermitage Library where I voted, I had to go back three times and correct my vote because it kept defaulting to Marsha Blackburn,” Parton wrote on Facebook Wednesday.
Parton told CNN in an interview that after the second time she saw her vote was incorrectly listed as Blackburn, the Republican senator running for governor, she called over a poll worker to make sure her vote was correct before submitting her ballot.
“She came over to help me. I did it twice myself, and it kept going back. And I thought, ‘I can’t stand here and hold up the line,’” Parton said.
Parton voted in Nashville last week on the first day of early voting, she said. She decided to publicly raise her issue with the voting machine after she saw others expressing similar concerns. She urged voters to make sure to review their printed ballot before submitting it.
“When I saw other people having the same issue, it upset me. I thought, you know what, go ahead and post about your own experience, because people need to know about this before they get there on voting day,” Parton said.
Mark Goins, Tennessee’s coordinator of elections, told Nashville’s WSMV — in response to claims from Parton and other local voters — that Davidson County’s machines give voters a printed ballot, which is one of several checks to ensure their selections are correct.
“It’s not a vote flipping situation. It’s normally like an unintended touch that they may not even realize,” Goins told the TV station. “In all the situations, since I’ve been here, that’s exactly what’s occurred. It’s been a scenario where, like an unintended consequence, they may not even know it.”
In 2024, Goins said Davidson County offered voters coffee stirrers by request to avoid unintended touches on the screen, something he said the county is doing again this election.
CNN has reached out to Davidson County’s election office and the Tennessee secretary of state’s office for comment.
Election Systems & Software, the country’s largest election equipment manufacturer, said voting machines are tested thoroughly before every election to ensure accuracy.
“There is no scenario in which a voter would be forced to cast a ballot that they believe did not reflect their intentions,” said ES&S spokesperson Katina Granger. “ES&S systems are designed with multiple safeguards to ensure voter intent is accurately captured, including voter review of selections, a voter-verifiable paper record, and post-election audits that compare results to the paper ballots.”
Similar concerns about voting machines flipping votes arose in 2024 in several locations around the country, but election officials said there was no reason to believe votes were being changed, CNN reported at the time.
“We tend to get these types of claims every election. It is usually user error (akin to a butt dial or mistyping something on your phone),” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting section attorney who now advises election administrators.
Becker said touchscreen voting machines show the voter their choices to give them a chance to correct any selections, and a printed ballot can be reviewed before the vote is submitted.
“If there’s a mistake, they can spoil the ballot and vote again,” he said.