US midterm elections: Voting machines malfunction in New York’s Westchester County
A handful of polling locations across the United States have reported some technical issues with how ballots are cast during the midterm elections , causing officials to delay the closing time for polls so votes can be cast.
In Westchester County, New York, north of New York City, officials said the machines meant to automatically read physical ballots were having trouble because the paper the ballots were printed on was too thick.
Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from Tarrytown, New York, said election officials were collecting ballots to be counted later manually. The machines are made by a company called Liberty Vote, a company that used to be called Dominion, which had a rocky history with US President Donald Trump, who had accused it, without evidence, of misrepresenting voting counts in past elections.
“Election officials are reassuring that they will be counted manually after everything is done,” Saloomey said, “and we don’t know of this issue in other districts across New York or the United States, and there are dozens that do use this system.”
County officials said on Tuesday that the ballots would be taken to the Board of Elections with a police escort and counted there with attorneys and representatives from all parties present, to prevent the spread of any “conspiracy” theories.
There were a number of places where technical issues have delayed things as well.
In Broward County, Florida, voting was delayed for 20 minutes at the start of the day because a new safety feature malfunctioned.
In North Carolina, the Board of Elections is considering extending voting by an hour in seven counties after widespread “technical issues” were reported.
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, a polling station at a school was temporarily closed after a power outage.
In several counties in Pennsylvania, voting has been extended by half an hour due to what officials said were “machine setup issues”.
