Ballot scanners at polling places across Westchester County, New York, stopped accepting paper ballots on Election Day, forcing the county onto emergency procedures as officials urged voters not to walk away without casting their votes.
The trouble began as polls opened at 6 a.m. The Westchester County Board of Elections said a problem involving the paper ballots was keeping the machines from taking them at locations throughout the county. Voting is continuing: voters fill in their paper ballots as usual and hand them to poll workers, who place them in orange emergency ballot bags. The board said the bags will be kept secure and monitored, under bipartisan control, and the ballots tallied later under standard election rules. "Every eligible vote will be counted," the board said, apologizing for the disruption and asking voters to be patient and remain in line.
The cause is still not settled. The board first attributed the problem to the thickness of the ballots and later issued a correction; County Executive Ken Jenkins did not specify a cause, and there was no timetable for a fix on Tuesday morning. State election officials said voting itself had not been disrupted, pointing to the long-standing emergency procedures now in use.
The failure lands in the middle of one of the most closely watched House races in the country: Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is defending New York's 17th Congressional District against Democrat Cait Conley. Lawler posted that there was "a problem with every ballot scanner in Westchester County," said it was not yet known whether the ballots or the machines were at fault, and told voters: "Stay on line and vote." Conley also urged residents to vote, saying the Board of Elections was working on the problem in a bipartisan way. New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office was monitoring the situation: "Your votes will count."
By Tuesday afternoon, Lawler said his campaign was already in court to have the bagged ballots counted in one central location, so the campaign, election monitors and attorneys can watch and oversee the process. Governor Kathy Hochul also addressed the failure, urging voters to remain in line and assuring them repeatedly that "every vote is going to be counted."
For Westchester voters, the practical meaning is simple: a ballot handed to a poll worker today is a vote, even though no machine takes it — it goes into a sealed, watched emergency bag and is counted under the same rules as any other ballot. Voters who prefer a machine can return later once the scanners are working again, and anyone with a problem can call the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline. Polls in New York stay open until 9 p.m.
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