Does This Video Actually Show E-Voting Fraud? [UPDATED]

The above video, allegedly showing e-voting machine fraud in Pennsylvania, caught the attention of the social web Tuesday morning. It's already received nearly 3,000 comments on YouTube and more than 4,500 upvotes on Reddit, hours after going online.

The anonymous uploader, known only as "centralpavote," claims he was unable to select Barack Obama as his choice for the president. He also claims a poll worker was unhelpful when presented with the problem, saying, "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK," before resuming her work.

NBC News confirmed the machine was "taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney," but the report didn't clarify what the problem actually was.

Does the video show nefarious vote-tampering at work? Probably not. Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Senior Staff Technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, argues calibration, not vote tampering, is to blame.

"Calibration issues are something we see a lot of," Hall told Mashable. "These are touchscreens, they get shaken around a lot, temperature variations can cause them to go out of whack. And a lot of these are 10- to 15-year-old computers, so it's not too crazy to expect them to do some funny things."

Hall pointed out that touchscreens can potentially lose calibration in individual areas of the screen, causing strange errors like the one possibly documented in the video. He also said users can interfere with touchscreen calibration by inadvertently touching a screen with another part of their body as they use it, though he added that's mostly a problem experienced by older voters (the uploader says he's a software developer, which means he likely knows how to operate a touchscreen).

Need more evidence nothing sinister is happening here? The electronic video machine in question is subject to touchscreen calibration errors, as documented by Video the Vote in 2008 and a local television station last month. Below, a poll worker explains the calibration issue and shows the steps to fixing it.

Mashable has reached out to the uploader of the video as well as the Pennsylvania State Board of Elections, and we'll update this post with any response.

Update: A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State told Mother Jones that a voting machine which was malfunctioning was re-calibrated and put back into service. He didn't, however, confirm it was the same machine starring in this video.

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