Officials attribute ballot failures to a municipal-contest software update

A judge granted Westchester County election officials permission to move thousands of paper ballots to a secure warehouse after vote-scanning machines malfunctioned. The New York Board of Elections said machines at locations throughout the county would not accept paper ballots when polls opened Tuesday because of a programming glitch.

The issue was expected to delay counting of votes in the competitive 17th Congressional District until at least Wednesday. Westchester County is considered the more liberal-leaning part of New York’s 17th Congressional District, which features a race between GOP Rep. Mike Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley.

Elections officials said the problem happened when they made a software update for one municipal contest after the machines had been prepared and tested. Machines in other municipalities continued to use the original software and therefore would not recognize the ballots, officials said.

Voters were instructed to put completed ballots into bags that election officials said would be safeguarded. The bags were to be transported under police escort to a county warehouse, where they would be scanned and counted under the supervision of representatives from political parties.

Lawler and Conley implored residents to cast their ballots and stressed that all votes would be counted. Lawler said the situation had caused “a lot of frustration, delays, lines and a lot of questions.” At a news conference, he added: “I want to be clear. There’s no shenanigans going on here.”

Westchester resident Toni Chrystal said she felt “uneasy” after casting her vote Tuesday morning amid the ballot issues. The real estate broker from White Plains said she completed her ballot around 7 a.m. and then dropped it into one of the designated ballot bags at her polling location as instructed.

Chrystal questioned why the failure occurred after testing: “Westchester is one of the richest counties in the state. How does this happen?” she said. “How come they weren’t tested yesterday or a week before? Early voting worked. How does it not work now?”