Tennessee election officials say they have fielded just one complaint resembling the claim made by Stella Parton, sister of the late Dolly Parton, that her ballot kept defaulting to Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn while she voted early in Nashville.
Parton, a singer and vocal Democrat, said in a Wednesday Facebook post that she had to go back three times to correct her selection after voting at the Hermitage Library in Davidson County.
“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. “I would never vote for her for anything.”
“I’m putting this out here because when we vote, we take it seriously but we try not to hold up the long lines. Do it anyway. Don’t let them rig this election,” she added.
In a follow-up post, the 77-year-old wrote, “And we have people asking why we’re so angry. I’m more frightened and frustrated than angry. This is so sad and heartbreaking but to think this is what it’s come to makes me angry for every good and innocent person in this country.”
Parton, who lost her sister Dolly to cancer in August, went further in the same round of posts, calling for the deaths of Elon Musk and unnamed foreign actors. “To think people like Elon Musk and Russian bots may be upended another election makes my skin crawl. May they all die and worms eat them,” she wrote.
The Tennessee Secretary of State’s Office told WSMV that out of roughly 400,000 ballots cast so far in the November midterms, it has received only one complaint matching Parton’s description.
The state has reminded voters that Tennessee’s voting systems include multiple checkpoints for catching and fixing errors before a ballot is cast, including an initial selection screen, a final review screen, and a paper record generated by the machine.
“Tennessee’s voting systems are designed with multiple safeguards to help ensure that ballots are recorded consistent with voter intent,” Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins told the Tennessean.
The Secretary of State’s Office is urging any voter who believes a machine has misrecorded a selection to flag the issue with a poll official immediately, before the ballot is finally cast.
