Dolly Parton’s Sister Says Tennessee Machine Kept Defaulting To Blackburn; State Claims “Not A Vote Flipping Situation”

Stella Parton, Dolly Parton’s younger sister, says a voting machine at the Hermitage Library in Davidson County kept selecting Republican gubernatorial nominee Marsha Blackburn, a candidate she says she would never vote for, forcing her to correct her ballot three times. Mediaite flagged her post. Tennessee’s elections coordinator calls such reports unintended touches, and says the paper ballot, not the screen, is what gets counted.

“In Tennessee last week at the Hermitage Library where I voted, I had to go back three times and correct my vote because it kept defaulting to Marsha Blackburn,” Parton wrote on Facebook. “Don’t let them rig this election.” Blackburn, a sitting U.S. senator, faces Democrat Jerri Green, a Memphis city councilmember, in the governor’s race.

Parton said she finally called over a poll worker on the third try, and she urged voters to “double check your ballot before you print it out and put it through the machine.” It’s unclear whether the problem was a malfunction, user error or something else.

She is not the only one. WSMV reported on Oct. 20 that Jackie Herrud, who voted at the Longview Recreation Center in Spring Hill in neighboring Williamson County, said, “I kept punching for the Democrat, Jerri Green, and it kept punching back to Marsha Blackburn.” Poll workers there told her they had heard similar complaints. Another Williamson County voter, Toni Fitzgerald, said the button was hard to press and she kept pressing until it registered; her site had no stylus.

In response, Tennessee’s Secretary of State’s office said it had received one matching complaint out of about 400,000 voters as of that Oct. 20 report, and pointed to the selection screen, the review screen and the paper record as safeguards. More calls came in after the story aired.

By the next day, Elections Coordinator Mark Goins told WSMV: “It’s not a vote flipping situation. It’s normally like an unintended touch that they may not even realize.” He added, “In all the situations, since I’ve been here, that’s exactly what’s occurred.” Goins said the marking device stores no votes, and the paper ballot is what gets counted. “They’re actually being counted on that paper ballot that’s going in the scanner,” he said. WSMV reported that Davidson and Williamson counties use ballot marking machines, while other counties use different equipment.

For each reported problem, Goins said, his office contacts the county and sends one Republican and one Democratic technician to examine the machine. Neither WSMV report describes the results of any such inspection.

Davidson County Elections Administrator John Richardson told WSMV that about 65,000 people had voted early in the county and only a few had called with concerns. The county is bringing back stir sticks, which work as styluses, because “when they use their finger it doesn’t necessarily connect.” It used them in 2024 and dropped them over plastic-use concerns. Richardson told NewsChannel 5 the touchscreens, in use for about a decade, respond to pressure, so fingers or nails can be less precise. A Davidson County voter there, Gladys McCowen, said she pressed the middle of Jerri Green’s name and Blackburn’s appeared, but her paper ballot was accurate. Blackburn urged voters to report irregularities to their local election commission, and Green’s campaign manager said voters had reported switching away from Green.

Tennessee has been here before. At an Aug. 5 press conference held jointly by Shelby County’s Democratic and Republican parties and the Memphis NAACP, NAACP member Gale Jones Carson said a machine selected a different candidate than the one she chose, and that it took three tries. Separately, the county election commission blamed “human error” for one early voting machine in Bartlett that omitted four state judicial races for 307 voters. In 2024, Shelby County officials said they found no irregularities after similar claims, and in Texas, Tarrant County said one of 58,000 first-day ballots was misprinted due to voter error, CBS News reported at the time.

** PRESS RELEASE ** pic.twitter.com/YC5Gazwnet

— Tarrant County Elections (@tarrantelection) October 22, 2024

Calibration is the likeliest technical explanation on offer. An election expert told the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington there are known calibration issues with some older touchscreens, including some used in Tennessee. No cause has been established for any of the Tennessee reports, and no independent inspection of the machines has been published.

Mediaite also cited Nashville turnout “15 times higher” than the 2022 midterm. WPLN reported that figure compares first-day in-person voting, up about 1,400% from 607 voters at the city’s sole polling site in 2022. With mail ballots the increase is about 240%, and against the 2018 governor’s race, first-day turnout fell nearly 20%. Early voting runs through Oct. 29, and Election Day is Nov. 3.