It’s Tim, not Tom, Walz, but typo on Florida county’s overseas ballot had limited effect

Voters are on high alert in a hotly contested presidential election in which the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, has baselessly warned about fraud.

Two real-life voting issues that cropped up on overseas ballots had some social media users concerned that someone was trying to hinder the Democratic candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. 

"Is everyone aware that Montana(‘s) (secretary) of state ‘FORGOT’ to put Kamala Harris on the electronic ballots sent to overseas and ex-pats?" a Sept. 22 Threads post said. "Florida just tried to do something similar, they put Tom Walz instead of Tim Walz."

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

We found numerous social media posts that said the ballot errors were intentional, with one X post calling the Walz misspelling "election interference."

The ballot errors were real — Montana’s overseas ballots briefly omitted Harris’ name and a Florida county sent ballots listing "Tom Walz" instead of "Tim Walz". But the social media posts omitted that election officials caught the errors and quickly fixed them, leaving few voters affected. There’s no evidence either incident was intentional.

Qualified overseas voters, including military service members and U.S. citizens residing abroad, can receive electronic ballots for U.S. elections, thanks to the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act. 

In Montana, the state’s Electronic Absentee System went live Sept. 20. One problem: Harris’ name was missing as a candidate for president. Montana’s secretary of state’s office said a voter reported the issue shortly after the system went live, and the system was taken offline. The system was up and running again later that day with the correct ballot. Only a few voters were impacted, and no printed ballots were affected, officials said.

Florida also sent overseas electronic ballots Sept. 20. But a problem soon emerged in Palm Beach County, home of the infamous butterfly ballots and hanging chads from the 2000 presidential election: Walz’s first name was spelled incorrectly — as "Tom Walz" — on Palm Beach County’s overseas electronic ballots.

But there was no foul play afoot. The mistake was the result of a typo by an election vendor that shouldn’t have been typing in names to begin with, said the county’s Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link. 

Link is a former Republican appointed to the post by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2019. She switched parties to run for election as a Democrat in the left-leaning county in 2020, and is running for reelection in November.

Link told PolitiFact that the county has one ballot file that is rigorously proofread — including by representatives for the candidates and the parties — for all ballots. But Enhanced Voting, the vendor that handles the county’s overseas ballots, chose to manually type in the vice presidential candidates’ names instead of using the file, Link said.

"The unfortunate part is we had no idea they had done that," Link said. "So had we known that, we would have known, obviously, that it needed to be proofread again."

Featured Fact-check

Instagram posts

stated on September 11, 2024 in an Instagram post

"Debate moderators made the false claim to Donald Trump that there is nowhere in the United States where abortion is legal up until birth."

The vendor then sent overseas voters a link Sept. 20 to download the electronic ballots, which contained the error. Link said her office learned of the typo early the next morning. Link said her office determined that 257 people had opened the email with the misspelling before it was corrected. Some of those 257 people may have seen the corrected ballot by the time they downloaded it, she said.

Link said an email was sent to those 257 voters notifying them of the updated link. Palm Beach County’s overseas voters don’t fill out an online ballot — people who request an electronic ballot must print it out and either fax or mail it back to the county. 

They can also request a printed ballot be mailed. Printed ballots are not produced by the same vendor and were unaffected by the error, Link said.

At least three Palm Beach County voters had returned ballots with the misspelling before it was corrected, Link said Sept. 24. There could be more if voters printed them out and the office hasn’t received them yet.

Regardless, Link said, those votes will be counted as voters intended, even if they voted for "Tom" Walz. Any voters concerned about their ballots are welcome to call the Palm Beach County office, Link said.

The error was limited to the 257 Palm Beach County ballots, Enhanced Voting President Aaron Wilson said. Enhanced Voting provides electronic ballot delivery for many Florida counties and is used in 1,500 jurisdictions in 24 states.

Travis Hart, the Lafayette County supervisor of elections and president of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, said he was unaware of the error happening in any other counties. Florida Department of State's Director of External Affairs Mark Ard said Sept. 25 that his office had not received reports of errors in any other counties.

"We regret the typo that led to these ballots going out with a candidate’s name misspelled, and we are glad it was reported and addressed so quickly," Wilson said. "We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again."

Link said her team would examine what they can do when working with vendors to avoid a repeat of the error in the future.

"The important thing is that it doesn't have any effect on the tabulation of the ballots," Link said. "Obviously we hate that it happened. We strive for excellence, and we know our voters expect that from us, and so we do hold ourselves accountable, whether it was our error or not."

A Threads post claimed Florida put "Tom Walz instead of Tim Walz" on its ballots.

That did happen, but it didn’t happen statewide, as the post claimed, and it affected few voters.  An election vendor inserted a typo on an online ballot available to overseas voters. The county’s elections supervisor said 257 overseas voters opened an email that contained a link to the ballot with the typo.

The link was updated the day after the ballots were sent. As of Sept. 24, three voters had returned ballots with the spelling mistake, but officials said those would be counted as those voters intended.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate the claim Half True.