Dominion Voting Systems, a company beset by dubious election fraud claims in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, said “human error” was to blame after machines in a Pennsylvania county failed to display Republican ballots.
Nicole Nollette, the executive vice president of operations at Dominion, announced the conclusion during a two-hour special meeting held by the Luzerne County volunteer election board on Monday, according to the Times Leader. This contradicts Director of Elections Bob Morgan, who said last week a “coding error” from within Dominion caused the mishap during local primary elections last Tuesday.
“Dominion deeply regrets the confusion this error caused,” Nollette said.
The Board of Elections in Luzerne County, located in northeast Pennsylvania, said every vote was counted correctly, according to local outlet Fox 56, a local outlet. But Republicans in particular raised concerns about the integrity of the election.
Luzerne County voters, regardless of their party affiliation, saw a ballot only labeled for the Democratic primary on the first screen, leading to confusion. Ballots would show as Republican when printed, even though they appeared to be Democratic on the screen. The election authority granted GOP voters to file a provisional or emergency ballot.
“Nobody did that intentionally,” Morgan said. “The moment we found out what the impact was we immediately sought to give advice to the public, and it is our desire to never have that happen again.”
“The ballot header typo had minimal impacts on the actual administration on the election and no impact to the results and the tally,” Nollette added.
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Morgan told PA Homepage May 18 there was “no evidence of any of this problem on the mail-in ballots, which were produced from that file. We’re still working with Dominion to get an explanation as to how this coding error occurred. They were as surprised about it as we were.”
PENNSYLVANIA COUNTY FAULTS ‘CODING ERROR’ AFTER VOTING MACHINES DIDN’T SHOW REPUBLICAN BALLOTS
Dominion then issued a statement that claimed a “ballot screen error” was present.
“Luzerne County’s election director has confirmed that there is a ballot screen error that is confined to the header on the viewing screen of the machine, and that all ballots are printing correctly with the Republican header and the Republican primary election races,” the company wrote. “As the county has reassured the voting public, all ballots will be correctly counted. We regret any confusion this has caused.”
Dominion has previously rejected allegations of being involved in 2020 election fraud and has filed multiple defamation lawsuits against people making those claims.
Some leaders in the county called for a third party to conduct a forensic audit.
“These machines — their credibility is lost,” said Election Board member Missy Thomas on Monday. “The system is compromised.”
County administrative services division head David Parsnik took a different stance.
“We will learn from this, and we will move forward,” he said.
Election Board Chairwoman Denise Williams, who claimed Dominion wasn’t the only one to blame for the error because there are multiple factors, said complaints will be “looked into” and the board will next meet in June.
LUZERNE COUNTY VOTES FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY INVESTIGATION AFTER VOTING MACHINE MISLABELING ERROR
Earlier in the week, Luzerne officials faced another problem after the WBRE 28/WYOU 22 Eyewitness News I-Team found voting machines unattended in a public walkway inside the Terrace Plaza mall. Voters quickly raised questions, harboring skepticism about machine errors.
“I don’t think they should be in the middle of the mall area. I told them where the room is over there to keep them secure. But we watch them,” mall manager Laura Gruene told PA Homepage.
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Morgan said he felt the voting machines should not have been in an area so easily accessible to the public but noted retrieving 900 machines around the county can take several days.
“Anything that could be tampered with such as memory cards were removed. There are no ballots inside. These basically are empty shells. We will contact our mover to get them picked up,” he said.
