‘Relatively minor glitch’: Pennsylvania voting machine error causes votes to ‘appear’ to flip, officials say

On Tuesday, voting machine errors in an eastern Pennsylvania county caused votes to “appear” to flip, according to officials, the Associated Press reported.

Some citizens in Northampton County noticed that their votes were incorrect on the printed voting records produced by the machine. After the error was reported to poll workers, it was discovered that the issue impacted all of the county’s more than 300 Election Systems & Software voting machines.

Officials claimed the issue was isolated, only impacting voters’ “yes” or “no” selections on whether to retain Pennsylvania Superior Court Judges Jack Panella and Victor Stabile for another 10-year term.

A statement from Northampton County explained, “It appears that when a voter selects a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ for one of the candidates for retention to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, the selection is recorded on the paper ballot and on the machine for the other candidate.”

“The issue is limited to the retention of Superior Court Judges, and is only an issue when recording the votes for when a voter selected a ‘Yes’ for one candidate and a ‘No’ for another candidate,” the county stated.

Poll workers were instructed to inform voters of the error before they entered their votes into the machine.

Northampton County director of administration Charles Dertinger claimed that despite the incorrect printed voting summary, voters’ actual selections were recorded correctly on the voting machines’ back-end system. He assured residents that votes would be tabulated accurately.

“What you read and what the computer reads are two different things. The computer does not read the text that is printed out,” Dertinger stated during a Thursday news conference.

Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure (D) told the AP that it was a “relatively minor glitch” caused by a coding error that was missed during testing. He claimed that “everybody’s vote’s going to count.”

“It’s our job to help give people confidence, help give them peace of mind in their voting processes,” McClure said. “We need to need to reassure the public that their voting is safe and secure.”

Linda Bennett, a senior vice president of customer operations for Election Systems & Software, admitted that the issue was caused by human error. Bennett stated that the glitch only impacted Northampton County’s judicial retention question.

“We deeply regret what has occurred today,” Bennett said. The company added that it is committed to "fair, accurate results."

The Pennsylvania Department of State claimed that the error did not impact any other races.

The county experienced issues with the company’s voting machines in 2019 when an incorrectly formatted ballot forced poll workers to count paper ballots.

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