The voting machine caused a stir because it chose Ms. Harris instead of Mr. Trump

The Laurel County Clerk’s Office, Kentucky, USA, announced that a voting machine would be deactivated on October 31, the first day of early voting in the state. The decision was made after a TikTok user posted a video showing that he wanted to vote for former president Donald Trump, but in the end the voting machine showed Vice President Kamala Harrris.

The video is 16 seconds long and was filmed at the Laurel County courthouse annex, which was used as a temporary polling location. In the video, a person repeatedly pressed the box to select Mr. Trump and deputy general JD Vance on the touch screen of the voting machine, but it was not recorded. On the 7th try, the box selecting Ms. Harris and Deputy Tim Walz right below it lit up again, even though this voter did not touch it.

The video quickly received more than 178,000 shares and tens of thousands of comments on TikTok.

Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown, a Republican, said that although his staff could not reproduce the error, they shut down the voting machine for testing as soon as they received the information.

At Mr. Brown’s request, an investigator from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office came to examine the machine that evening. After a few minutes of trying, this person was able to reproduce the above error once, but could not do it a second time.

Mr. Brown said the error occurred when the user touched the space between two check boxes. “I hate to see this happen in Laurel County. We work hard to ensure elections are accurate, safe and secure,” he said.

The faulty machine was a digital ballot marking device. Voters insert paper ballots and then select candidates on the screen. After pulling out the ballot, voters check to make sure they have not chosen the wrong one, then cast their ballot into a nearby scanner to enter their choice.

Mr. Brown said no one had ever complained about the machine before and the person who posted the video was finally able to make the right choice. The device was put back into service, with no further problems discovered, according to the Laurel County clerk.

The office of Kentucky Secretary Michael Adams, a Republican, said it had not received any complaints about “vote switching.”

The Trump campaign and Ms. Harris have not commented on the information.

Former President Trump has repeatedly made allegations of fraud after losing to Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The Republican candidate on October 25 threatened to make officials election officials and voters he considers “cheating” must face long prison sentences if he is re-elected.