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Voting Machines Fail in Westchester County, Paper Ballots to Be Hand-Counted
Confirmed
In Short: Voting machines in Westchester County, New York, failed to accept paper ballots, forcing hand counting.
Voting machines in Westchester County, New York, failed to accept paper ballots on Tuesday, causing delays and confusion at polling places.
The Westchester County Board of Elections reported that the issue involved the thickness of the paper ballots, which caused machines to reject them.
County officials assured voters that their ballots were secure and would be counted, urging them to stay in line and vote.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) is running in a tight race against Democrat Cait Conley, and the malfunctioning machines could affect the outcome.
The New York Attorney General’s Office is monitoring the situation, and county officials are working to resolve the issue.
The Election Protection hotline received dozens of calls from voters reporting issues with the voting machines.
County Clerk Jeff Cotton and election commission Chairwoman Laura Gross emphasized the importance of hand-counted ballots, citing concerns over machine security and cost.
Gross said the Searcy County Election Commission will improve its procedures to avoid future discrepancies and advocated for continued use of hand counts.
In Searcy County, Arkansas, the Quorum Court voted to hand-count ballots, though voting machines are still available for voters with certain disabilities.
The Searcy County Election Commission will count roughly 1,700 ballots, a process that took the entire day.
In Georgia, a hand count of all ballots was required in a county with 67,000 people, highlighting the challenges of manual counting.
When Georgia recounted the 2020 presidential race, it required thousands of ballot counters working long shifts over multiple days.
What this adds
The thickness of the paper ballots caused the machines to reject them, leading to the need for hand counting.
The hand-counting process in Searcy County took the entire day, highlighting the time-consuming nature of manual counting.
What's confirmed
- Voting machines in Westchester County, New York, the state's seventh most populous county, are not accepting paper ballots at polling locations throughout the county, the Westchester County Board of Elections said in a statement Tuesday morning.
- "Stay on line and vote. Do not leave the polling place without voting," Lawler said.
What's still developing
- “If I take my pen, which costs 99 cents, and put my votes on the piece of paper, two things have happened: I’ve saved a whole lot of money… and I’ve also made sure I don’t have a machine, some of which have computers in them, between my choices and what’s written on the paper,” she said.
- “I have 100% faith that these machines cannot be hacked,” Davidson said.
- Voter Patrick Reagan, who has been voting in Westchester County for the last 40 years, spoke to Fox News outside a polling place in Yonkers.
- Part of Westchester County is in a district that has traditionally favored the Democratic Party.
- The Polls are open and operational, and every vote cast will be counted.
- “Water demands a lot of force compared with air,” Raman said.
- MIT engineers built a paper-thin robot that swims through water with help from a single layer of living muscle cells.
- SAO PAULO, Brazil— About 125 million Brazilians voted Oct. 4 on machines that print no paper ballots.
- Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, or TSE, which designs the machines and oversees elections, says there has been no proven fraud since their 1996 debut.
- The two research teams, describing their achievements on Wednesday in scientific papers published in the journal Nature, said nuclear clocks have the potential to outperform the best conventional atomic clocks but do not do so yet.
- The two devices represent the next generation of atomic clocks, the ultra-accurate timekeeping machines first created in 1949.