Georgia's senate runoff elections took place on Jan. 5 and while Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler, the other race between Republican Senator David Purdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff remains too close to call.
On the day of the election, TrendingPolitics.com published a story claiming voters were being told that voting machines were malfunctioning.
Voting Machines 'Down,' Voters Asked to Insert Ballots in Box
The outlet reported a local radio show that received calls from multiple voters in counties across Georgia claiming they were unable to cast their votes due to defunct voting machines.
According to the article, the voters were told to insert their ballots in a box and that they would be scanned later in the day. The report also noted that the malfunctioning Dominion voting machines were only reported in Republican-leaning counties in Georgia.
"Dominion machines in... 3 of the largest Republican precincts...are down...They are told they can't scan their ballots because the machines don't work...The pole workers are saying 'When it's fixed we'll scan it for you'...There's all kinds of red flags," the article quoted the radio show's hostJohn Fredricks as saying.
A number of Twitter users also echoed the claims of non-functional voting machines in predominantly red counties in Georgia. Here are some of the tweets:
In a tweet posted on Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump also wrote that "reports are coming out of the 12th Congressional District of Georgia that Dominion Machines are not working in certain Republican Strongholds for over an hour."
The president then claimed that "ballots are being left in lock boxes," and then added that "hopefully they count them."
Fact-Check
Turns out, Fredricks as well as the accounts spreading the claims of malfunction voting machines happen to have a history of tweeting out election disinformation and voter fraud conspiracy theories.
As far as Trump is concerned, his tweet was addressed by Gabriel Sterling, a Republican Georgia election official. He explained that there was a problem of faulty voting machines in Columbia County but the problem was resolved early in the day.
Sterling had tweeted about the problem early on the day of the runoff elections on Twitter and had described the measures implemented to ensure that the Georgia runoffs continued smoothly.
