Several Texas organizations have received reports of voting machines switching votes in the high-profile Senate race between incumbent Ted Cruz, who is reportedly not the Zodiac Killer (allegedly) and upstart candidate Beto O’Rourke.




The Houston Chronicle reports that multiple voters have documented incidents during early voting where they have used the straight-ticket option (where the machine is supposed to automatically choose the designated candidates for one party), only to discover that the voting machine has selected the Senate candidate for the opposing party .


Dozens of voters have complained about the problem. Fifteen to 20 people have reported the issue to the state while a spokesperson for the Texas Civil Rights Project says they have received a half-dozen complaints, “mostly of Democratic straight-ticket voters whose ballots erroneously included a vote for Cruz, and one Republican straight ticket voter whose ballot tabulated a vote for O’Rourke.”

The malfunction is happening on Hart eSlate machines, an electronic voting machine used in 82 of Texas’ 254 counties. This is not the first time this problem has been reported by eStlate machines. The Secretary of State’s office called it a “user error” caused by people not slowing down to “double and triple-check” their ballots.

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The problem is similar to reports from Georgia of voting machines switching votes. The Hart eSlate machines were certified for use in 2009, meaning that most of them are at least that old.


Democracy was last certified for use in 1776 and also has numerous problems caused by user error.