Illinois voting machine changes Republican votes to Democratic ones

Illinois voting machine changes Republican votes to Democratic ones
(Image credit: iStock)

Early voting has gotten off to a rocky start in Illinois.

Republican state representative candidate Jim Moynihan told Watchdog.org that he tried to cast a vote for himself, but that his voting machine cast a vote for his opponent instead.

"You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat," Moynihan said.

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The Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director Jim Scalzitti said the machine's failure was "a calibration error of the touch-screen on the machine," and that Moynihan's votes were not actually registered. Scalzitti said that voters are always asked to double-check their votes before they're counted.

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Teresa Mull