Guilford County election officials say they have fixed a voting machine that almost cast an incorrect vote in the highly-contested U.S. Senate race. As it turns out, it's not the first time it has happened.

The problem occurred at the Craft Recreation Center in Greensboro Wednesday morning. A voter intended to vote for Kay Hagan. But before he pressed the vote button, it switched to Thom Tillis. He tried again, and the same thing happened.

The voter then alerted poll workers. Guilford Elections Director Charles Collicutt says they re-calibrated the machine and now it is reporting as it should be. The error with the Craft Rec Center machine is the only one known to have the problem this cycle. He says there's no way to know for sure how many times such an error has occurred.

He suggests that voters pay close attention to what's being marked, and they can also track their votes on the paper ballot generated at the polling booth.

Similar problems were detected in the 2008 and 2012 elections.  In each case the problem was fixed before the vote was cast. Collicutt says there's also an audit of the voting machine results, comparing the electronic record to a paper record that records the vote simultaneously. Those audits have not turned up any discrepancy.

As of the end of Wednesday, just over 4,000 people have voted at the Craft Rec Center location for this election. With three days left of early voting, 36,807 people in Guilford County have already cast their ballots.

 

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