Rage Against The Machine: Some Claim Voting Sites Switching Ballots From Trump To Rubio [UPDATE]

AUSTIN, TX -- A conservative radio station in Austin is reporting that some half-dozen polling machines in the county are automatically switching people’s votes from Donald Trump to Marco Rubio.

At least three voters called into KLBJ radio station’s “Todd and Don Show” to report the alleged unauthorized switcheroo. One caller had a stranger post-voting tale to tell, saying her vote was shifted as a ballot cast for a minor candidate named Linda Gray.

“That’s not good,” one of the hosts told her, his suspicions rising. “You are the fourth person to call us in the past hour to say they had that same problem. You’re the first to have somebody else, but the other three were Rubio.”

Based on the accounts, the host reached a conclusion that something was amiss with the voting machines.

“Something’s fishy,” he intoned. “Something is going on strange.”

The radio commentator said the Rubio-related reports all came from Williamson County, specifically from Round Rock, Leander and Georgetown.

“So it appears to be a Williamson County problem,” he concluded.

One caller reporting an alleged machine-induced switch insisted he never touched the wrong candidate button in casting his vote. And, yet, he says the switch was made.

“When I reviewed my ballot at the end, the person I voted for president was marked differently than how I voted,” the caller, identifying himself only as Eddie, related.

“And I know that when I touched the button that I hit the right button.”

Reached late Tuesday, Williamson County Elections Administrator Christopher Davis said he’s gotten no official reports of such malfunctions. He said the same machines that were being used on Super Tuesday were utilized for the early voting period from Feb. 16-26, and not a single issue of switched votes were reported then either.

“That was the first we heard of it,” Davis said of the KLBJ program that aired the voters’ gripes. “We had 40,000 in-person votes for early voting and had not one report of this.”

He noted it would be unlikely for a voter to inadvertently press Trump instead of Rubio, as the latter is three spaces above the former on the electronic ballot.

He offered a theory: Given the numerous candidates, the electronic sheet is a two-pager -- the first 12 candidates feautured on the first page and two more slots (“uncommitted” and Linda Gray) on the second. Davis said reports were received during early voting of people inadvertently pressing one of the two choices on the second page, not knowing that inadvertent selection would supersede the first.

But even then, there’s a review page that appears at the end of a voting session allowing people to check their work before submitting their final ballots, he said.

Still, Davis said he would further investigate the matter to make sure.

“We’re not taking this lightly,” he said. “We will investigate it.”

There’s no telling if the alleged vote switching is machine-generated or due to voter error or attributable to artificial intelligence gone rogue like Hal, the computer on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Yet in some conspiracy-minded circles, the handful of reported incidents is making for some juicy Super Tuesday political intrigue.