STARK COUNTY, Ohio — VERIFY goes on the road today to the Stark County Board of Elections in Canton, where we continue looking into electronic voting.
THE CLAIM
We're checking out a claim shared on reddit about how Issue 1 is showing up on electronic voting screens. The post claims you have to click "more" to get to the point where you're able to cast your ballot on this particular issue. It also says it you click "next," you could skip voting on issue one entirely.
SOURCE
- Travis Secrest, elections systems manager at Stark County Board of Elections
EXPLANATION
Secrest showed me how electronic voting works at the at the Stark County Board of Elections, where they use the Dominion Image Cast X voting machine. He explained that no matter whether the text size is set to "regular" or "large," voters have to scroll down to get to the section where they're able to cast their vote on Issue 1.
"Since it is such a long issue, there is a scroll down option to scroll down two times in order to get to the selections where the voter would make a yes or no choice," he said.
To clarify, the "yes" and "no" options don't always show up on the screen. Secrest confirmed this.
"In order to get to the 'yes' and 'no' selections, you will have to hit the scroll down button at least two times."
I then asked Secrest to show my what happens if someone doesn't tap "scroll down" and instead hits the "next" button. He demonstrated for me that there is a "previous" button that can be used to back up the ballot to any previous issue or candidate race.
"And then once they get to the end of their ballot, there is a review page which brings up all their selections," he said. "If there are warnings, if there are issues, if they made a selection that they didn’t want to make, they can hit any of those races on their review screen, and it’ll take them right back to that place in the ballot."
ANSWER
So we can VERIFY that in Stark County, part of this reddit post is true, and part of it is misleading.
Here's what's true: No matter what text size is selected on the voting machine, Issue 1 won't appear on one screen, and while the button isn't labeled as "more," you do have to tap a button labeled "scroll down" before you can see the part of the ballot where you’re able to cast your vote on Issue 1.
Here's what's misleading: The post also claims that if you accidentally hit "next," you'll skip your chance to vote on Issue 1. If you do accidentally tap the "next" button before you cast your vote on Issue 1 in Stark County, there are a lot of warnings to send you back and make sure you do vote on it, if you want to.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Every electronic voting machine is different. If you're voting in Lorain County, you can find our VERIFY about how Issue 1 shows up on that voting system on WKYC.com and on the WKYC YouTube page.
Remember, if you see something you want us to fact check, you can send it our way at VERIFY@wkyc.com.