AUSTIN, Texas — The Secretary of State, two days into early voting in Texas, is combating the long-debunked theory that voting machines may be switching votes between candidates.

A forest of recent tweets, many with the hashtag #TexasVoters, have claimed that voting machines are switching votes from Beto O’Rourke to Gov. Greg Abbott and Abbott to O’Rourke. If the voter claims it’s a vote cast in Austin, it’s often from O’Rourke to Abbott. In areas of the state that lean Republican, the claim is often the vote cast is switched from Abbott to O’Rourke.

Similar vote-switching claims during the 2020 election were proven to be false. On Thursday afternoon, Secretary of State John Scott’s office denied the claims.

“These claims of ‘vote switching’ are false, and in many cases are being spread by people who didn’t actually witness the issue first hand,” according to a statement from the Secretary of State’s office. “No machines are ‘switching’ votes, in fact, this same misinformation surfaced widely during the 2018 General Election, with people claiming their votes were being ‘switched’ from Beto O’Rourke to Ted Cruz in the Senate race.”

The statement is sent out by Secretary of State spokesman Sam Taylor, but Taylor represents Scott, a leader many Democrats initially discounted because of his early affiliation with former President Donald Trump’s fight to overturn the 2020 election. Scott has audited the election results of urban counties, at the behest of Texas lawmakers, but he’s also vocally opposed the ongoing “Stop the Steal” claims in an interview with Texas Monthly in October.  

Attorney Sidney Powell lodged complaints that Dominion voting machines had switched votes from Trump to Biden when Trump contested the results of the 2020 presidential election. At the time, Powell claimed it ws the result of software changes engineered by former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Once Dominion sued her, Powell admitted under oath “no reasonable person would conclude [her] statements were truly statements of fact.”

Tweets about election machine “malfunctions” encourage voters to “check their ballots” and similar tweets are occurring in other contentious races across the nation.

The Secretary of State’s office has issued multiple advisories across multiple administrations. Here is the advisory Director of Elections Keith Ingram issued in 2018, related to supposed problems on Hart eSlate machines.

The office also addressed one tweet out of Midland, saying it was likely user error that contributed to problems. 

"We heard directly from the election administrator there, Carolyn Graves, that the issue was confirmed to be user error on the voting machines," according to the agency's statements. "One voter kept accidentally tapping the race above the one she was currently voting on, making it appear that votes were switching. Workers at the polling place observed her after she complained about her vote being incorrect, and then explained to her what the issue was, and she was able to successfully vote."