SOUNDING THE ALARM

Dolly Parton’s Sister Alleges Faulty Voting in Home State

Stella Parton is encouraging voters to be careful.

Stella Parton, the younger sister of late country singer Dolly Parton, is raising serious concerns following her voting experience in Nashville.

Parton, 77, wrote in a Facebook post that the machine in her voting booth defaulted to select MAGA gubernatorial candidate Marsha Blackburn, now a senator.

“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 in her post. “I would never vote for her for anything.”

She encouraged voters to make sure their vote is correct, regardless of how many people are waiting.

In response to the issues raised by her now-viral post, the Tennessee Coordinator of Elections Mark Goins told The Tennessean, “Tennessee’s voting systems are designed with multiple safeguards to help ensure that ballots are recorded consistent with voter intent,” and encouraged voters to “carefully review the paper ballot” before handing it over to be cast.

“I’m putting this out here because when we vote, we take it seriously but we try not to hold up the long lines,” Parton wrote. “Do it anyway. Don’t let them rig this election.”

She clarified in a separate post, “No, this is not a joke!” adding, “What good is your vote if the machines are ‘fixed’? This is the issue here.”

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Parton’s sister, music icon Dolly Parton, died on August 25 at age 80 following a short battle with cancer. Last month, Stella revealed why she kept the illness a secret. “Dolly did not want anybody to tell that because Dolly could not bear negative things and she would not have wanted her fans worried about it,” she told CBS Mornings’ Gayle King.

She continued, “She didn’t want a lot of the family worried about it. Some of us knew, the ones that were closer, but not every relative.” Dolly herself remained publicly apolitical throughout her career.

Stella Parton’s concerns come amid early voting in Tennessee, which began on Oct. 14. Since then, voters like Parton have reported problems with ballot machines. Democrats in particular have struggled to vote for Jerri Green, Blackburn’s opponent. Despite punching the button for Green, the machines keep selecting Blackburn, they say.

Social media users have reported similar phenomena in several states. In Florida, voters have also alleged the machines have caused issues. Florida requires paper ballots, but the state allows counties to provide an accessible voting solution like the touch-screen ExpressVote ballot marker. It works like a voting machine, but it prints the voter’s choices on a paper ballot for the voter to submit rather than casting votes automatically.

Election officials say the issues may stem from extra-sensitive screens and thick fingers or long fingernails, which can lead to misclicks.

In a fraught midterm season, concerns over voting machines could compound mistrust of election processes. The Trump administration has made efforts to stifle what it claims are noncitizen voters, even threatening criminal prosecution for local officials who don’t comply with voter roll cleanses.

About half of voters don’t believe U.S. election systems are free from hacking and other technological threats, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

“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 wrote in a comment under her post. “To think people like Elon Musk and Russian bots may be upending another election makes my skin crawl.”

Parton concluded, “May they all die, and worms eat them.”

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Dana Herrnstadt Editorial Intern, Obsessed

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