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NR Nathaniel Rakich Nathaniel Rakich Managing editor at Votebeat.

“Almost always this is a result of fat-fingering, or people hitting the screen too hard, which can mess up the calibration. In almost every jurisdiction, even with a touchscreen machine, it prints out a paper ballot with those choices. The machine does not record your vote immediately. So voters who are concerned should check that paper record, and if it's not correct, you can try again and fix it.”

GD POLITICS · Policy · October 2026

“Almost always this is a result of fat-fingering, or people hitting the screen too hard, which can mess up the calibration. In almost every jurisdiction, even with a touchscreen machine, it prints out a paper ballot with those choices. The machine does not record your vote immediately. So voters who are concerned should check that paper record, and if it's not correct, you can try again and fix it.” — Nathaniel Rakich, GD POLITICS

Context

Responding to social-media reports of touchscreen voting machines changing votes, the elections analyst explains what usually causes it and how voters can check the paper record. Practical advice on verifying your own ballot.

Transcript

GD POLITICS
Nathaniel Rakich

…reasons. You know, there's always a lot of concern about that from both the left and the right. I've actually seen more of it from the left this year, I would say. But basically what happens is that almost always this is a result of just kind of like fat fingering or maybe the way to just call

Galen Druke

those people on social media fat, Nathaniel.

Nathaniel Rakich

Fat fingers. They're fingering a little bit. You know, okay. But or people just like hitting the screen too hard, which can like mess up the calibration of the machine. The other important thing to note is that in almost every jurisdiction, even when there is a touchscreen voting machine, it will print out a paper ballot that has those choices on there. So voters who are concerned about this should always double check before they feed out. Like the machine does not record your vote immediately. It prints out a ballot, essentially, that you then, that that's what's counted and you hand it in. And so if anybody's concerned about, you know, votes being flipped, they should, they should check that paper record. And as long as that's correct, then all good. And if it's not correct, you can, you can try to re-cat and re-go on the machine and fix it. So that's one thing. The other thing that I would say is the Department of Justice, they've been active lately, you know, but they've said that they are sending a thousand election monitors to all 50 states, which is the biggest election monitoring program that the department has ever done. So obviously that part of it is unprecedented, but…

Galen Druke

I have a personal question. I voted yesterday early in person. Have you voted yet?

Nathaniel Rakich

I have not. I'm going to wait for election day.

Galen Druke

You're in election day, girly. I think I could have guessed that, actually. You've seen. I actually, I haven't voted on election

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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