I checked this with XEV. Instead of "normal" behavior that triggers "button 1", it instead triggers either button 2 (middle click) or button 1 followed by button 2. The behavior identified in XEV was intermittent and not consistent. I am not adept enough at configuring xinput to fix this. I ended up installing "Easystroke Gesture Recognition" from synaptic, recorded the button using "Add Action" and assigned the recorded action to "button 1". That appears to have solved the issue for me and testing with XEV registers the button as "button 1" consistently.
I checked this with XEV. Instead of "normal" behavior that triggers "button 1", it instead triggers either button 2 (middle click) or button 1 followed by button 2. The behavior identified in XEV was intermittent and not consistent. I am not adept enough at configuring xinput to fix this. I ended up installing "Easystroke Gesture Recognition" from synaptic, recorded the button using "Add Action" and assigned the recorded action to "button 1". That appears to have solved the issue for me and testing with XEV registers the button as "button 1" consistently.