Voting machines across Westchester County, New York — the state's seventh most populous county and home to one of the most closely watched congressional races in the country — were not accepting paper ballots at polling locations throughout the county on Tuesday, the Westchester County Board of Elections confirmed in a statement.
"The Westchester County Board of Elections (BOE) is aware of an issue involving the paper ballots that is preventing some voting machines from accepting ballots at polling locations throughout the County," the board said. "Voters should continue to complete their paper ballots as instructed by poll workers. Ballots that cannot be processed by voting machines will be placed in designated orange emergency ballot bags, which will remain secure and monitored. These ballots will subsequently be counted."
ABC7 Eyewitness News in New York reported that the problem — according to the Board of Elections — is the thickness of the paper ballots, which is preventing the scanners from accepting them. Officials have not said when the machines will be fixed.
The disruption hit Westchester County on the same day voters were casting ballots in New York's 17th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler is locked in a hotly contested race against Democratic challenger Cait Conley. The district includes most of northern Westchester.
Lawler was first to alert voters to the problem, posting on X Tuesday morning that every scanner in the county was down.
"The Board of Elections is working with their vendors to resolve it. However, every ballot will be counted. Stay on line and vote. Do not leave the polling place without voting," Lawler wrote.
Conley also weighed in on social media, telling voters not to be dissuaded. "There are technical issues with ballot scanners in Westchester, but don't worry: you can still vote and every vote is being counted!" she wrote, adding that the issue was being worked on by the Board of Elections "in a bipartisan manner." A caption on an Instagram post from the county Board of Elections circulated alongside the story, repeating the board's guidance that voters should keep filling out paper ballots while machines were unable to process them.
Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins did not mince words.
"My office is fully aware of the ongoing problems with ballots and voting scanners across Westchester County, and I want to be absolutely clear: this situation is unacceptable," Jenkins said. "Voters should remain in line and exercise their right to vote. Every eligible voter will have the opportunity to cast their ballot, and every vote must be counted."
Jenkins said he had directed County officials, including representatives from the Law Department, to monitor the voting process, and vowed to convene a bipartisan team once the issues were resolved "to conduct a thorough review of the decisions and failures that led to this debacle, determine where accountability lies and ensure that this never happens again."
"Westchester County voters deserve a fair, secure and smooth election process," Jenkins said. "Today, we have fallen short of that standard."
Polls were set to close at 9 p.m. as scheduled, and Jenkins said there was no need to keep them open later. Voters who spoke with CBS New York described a process that, while frustrating, was not chaotic. "The instructions were clear. I just followed the instructions, get authenticated, vote and place it in a sealed bag," one voter said. Resident Cathy Ronan called the backup procedure "typical."
The Board of Elections said it remains in constant communication with New York state officials, county leaders and poll workers as technicians work to restore normal operations.
Our Take
Here we go again, folks. A major American county — one hosting a House race that could decide control of Congress — wakes up on Election Day and discovers its voting machines won't read the ballots. The official explanation is ballot paper thickness. Maybe that's true. But Americans have heard a lot of explanations over the years, and trust in the machinery of elections is not exactly at an all-time high.
To the Board of Elections' credit, the contingency plan appears to have worked: orange emergency bags, bipartisan custody, ballots counted. That's the system functioning as designed. What is not acceptable is a process where voters are told their ballots are going "into a bag" to be counted later with no clear timeline, no public chain-of-custody reporting, and no explanation of why the ballots and the machines apparently weren't tested together before Election Day. That is basic quality control, and Westchester County — one of the wealthiest, most-resourced counties in America — has no excuse.
County Executive Jenkins called it "unacceptable" and promised accountability. Patriots should hold him to it. The question tonight is simple: will every one of those orange bags be opened, counted and observed under the same scrutiny as a scanned ballot — and will Westchester voters ever get a straight answer about how this happened?
