The Facebook post was about an Illinois voter’s touchscreen voting failure. Representatives of the election commission responded

A social media user took to Facebook to talk about problems with her mother’s early voting.

“My mom voted early,” a user wrote in Message dated October 29. “That’s what happened to her!”

The poster said the voting machine in Galesburg, Illinois, at the Knox County Courthouse flipped her mom’s vote.

“When I cast my vote for President, he immediately chose another candidate,” read the post, which appeared to retell the story in the mother’s words. “I couldn’t turn it back. I asked for help. Their efforts (proved) unsuccessful. They invited our district secretary, Scott Erickson. “Scott finally got the vote overturned and the machine allowed me to vote for President.”

The poster urged people to check their votes and added that “ALL Republican votes have been replaced by Democratic candidates.”

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation in its news feed. (More about our partnership with Metawhich owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

When we looked into the author’s second-hand account, we found that a local election official described a response to a similar issue that has since been resolved.

Officials disabled a touchscreen voting machine after it failed to properly reflect a voter’s choices during early voting in Knox County, Illinois. Voters noticed the machine reflected the wrong choice and reported it to election officials before their ballots were cast. WGIL-FMA local radio station reported this. Knox County Clerk Scott Erickson told the station the machine will not be used until after the election.

Erickson, mentioned in the Facebook post, said the machine had problems with calibration, resulting in an incorrect selection.

“It was most likely a problem with the calibration of this machine,” Erickson. said. “We calibrated it, put it back into service, and everything went smoothly. A few days later, this machine started exhibiting the same problems, and at that point I decided that we were going to take this machine offline and not ready for the election.”

The Facebook post said: “(My mom) suggested voting with a stylus but I still don’t know why it changed?”

It’s unclear what exactly happened in this voter’s specific situation, but election officials in other parts of the country where people have accused the machines of voter fraud have urged people to use the provided stylus.

Chris Madison, director of the Arkansas State Board of Elections, said using a stylus can help voters avoid the mistake of tapping the wrong candidate’s name. PolitiFact recently found Pants on fire! allegation that voting machines in Fordyce, Arkansas were flipping votes.

The machine in question in Galesburg is offline, WGIL reported.

Erickson said all votes cast for the machine before it was taken out of service were secure and cast.

“There is a memory card that stores those votes, so all those votes will be included in the final tally on election night,” he told reporters. radio station. “We just don’t use this machine during the election.”

Since 2006, voters in Knox County, Illinois allowed to choose whether they want to vote using a touchscreen device or by filling out a paper ballot, according to the county’s website. Voters who choose to use the machine can review their ballots before they are cast.

Erickson, who told the station he votes using touchscreen machines on Election Day, assured voters that using the machines is safe: “Electronic voting is absolutely safe.”

We reached out to Erickson for comment and did not receive a response before publication.

We found no evidence that this issue signaled any partisan fraud.