WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — A woman campaigning outside a Tarrant County early voting site this week says she never expected some videos she filmed earlier this week to get this much attention.
Jess Glover says she just thought that what she was being told was worth documenting. So she pulled out her phone and recorded two voters who claimed to her that the machines inside this White Settlement polling place had inaccurately recorded their votes, switching their choices for president from Donald Trump to Kalama Harris.
"When I got the paper ballot, it had the other candidate's name on it," one voter says to Glover in the video.
Glover was surprised at what the two men had to say -- that "what [they] selected on the screen printed out the opposite when it came out," she said -- and wanted to raise awareness of the issue, so she posted her clips to social media. When a political activist reached out to request permission to use the videos for a post on his own account, Glover agreed.
Within a few hours, her footage made its way to an account from a conservative social media presence who goes by the username @BehizyTweets on Monday evening.
From there, the reach of Glover's video exploded. At the time of this article's publishing, less than 24 hours after it was initially posted, the @BehizyTweets video using Glover's footage had been viewed more than 7 million times.
The X post cited Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French, who had shared Glover's footage to his own X account earlier in the day, and was quoted as saying, "Reports were that people who selected Trump on the screen were seeing Harris on the printed ballot." French has since said the complaints shared in Glover's footage have since been escalated to the Trump campaign, which he said was "rightly concerned" about the claims.
Was there really something nefarious at play? Glover isn't sure.
"I'm not trying to spread conspiracies," Glover said. "I'm looking for the truth. It might be a simple matter of machines are faulty."
Tarrant County Election Administrator Clint Ludwig says the truth is that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. He says Tarrant County processed 58,000 ballots during the first day of early voting on Monday, and that elections officials received just one reported issue. In that instance, Ludwig said in a written statement, a voter reviewed their printed ballot before submitting it, found that it did not correctly reflect his choice for president, had his original ballot spoiled, and was given a new ballot to correct the issue.
In a response video Ludwig posted to the Tarrant County Elections office's X account, he explained where he think the error in that one incident happened.
"What we believe to have occurred is that the individual did make a selection on the machine, and that selection was printed on their ballot," Ludwig said. "When they went to cast their ballot, they checked it and realized that was not the vote they wanted. This is not uncommon, and there's a practice in place called 'spoiling the ballot' to handle this. The individual notified the lead clerk that they need to spoil their ballot, and he was issued a new ballot and able to vote. Knowing this, you can vote with confidence in Tarrant County."
Ludwig's written statement did, however, acknowledge one flub his office made on the ballots that Tarrant County residents got on Day One of early voting: A labeling error on the county's printed ballots had to be corrected in the race for the office of "Presiding Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals." Those issues, the statement said, were addressed.
Commissioner Alisa Simmons said in a Tuesday statement "I have been assured by our Elections Administrator that neither the voting machines nor the software are capable of altering a vote. Out of nearly 115,000 votes cast during the first two days of Early Voting, there has been only one unverified allegation. Tarrant County's elections have a long-standing record of being secure, accurate, and without incident."
Still, voters said poll workers on Tuesday made sure to remind them to check their ballots before submitting them -- especially if they'd waiting a long time in line to cast their votes.
"They ask us to double-check," said one voter, Pierce Hooper. "So, I did that, and then triple-checked it with the printout screen, and the printed list. It all looked good to me. So if they flipped it, that's a neat trick."
Glover and Hooper both agree that they have been pleased to see how large turnouts for early voting in Tarrant County.
"I waited about an hour, and I felt it was worth it," Hooper, "The consequences of who you might vote for are big. If you feel patriotic, if you feel excitement to be a part of the process, that's a very good reason to come out."
As for Glover, in the wake of all the attention her footage received, she said she has no regrets about filming and posting the videos. She just wants to see proper democracy in action, she said.
Said Glover: "No matter who you vote for, [it's important] that your vote goes through to the right person -- the way that you want it so that everything is fair."