Allies of US President Donald Trump have accused Democrats of trying to steal the election after ballot scanners stopped accepting paper ballots in Westchester County, New York.
However, county officials said the problem was caused by a programming error, not election fraud, and assured voters that every valid ballot would be counted.
Officials explained that a change to a local election contest had not been properly updated in the machines, leaving them with outdated programming. The malfunction became a topic of concern among prominent Trump supporters, who used the incident to make claims of election cheating on social media . The issue affected ballot scanners across most of the county on Tuesday, Election Day.
Most ballot scanners across the county were still using older programming and could not read the updated paper ballots. The machines rejected ballots they could not recognise instead of counting them incorrectly. These bags would remain secure and monitored until the votes were counted. The New York State Board of Elections later explained that emergency procedures had been put in place to protect the ballots. The scanner problem did not mean that voters were unable to cast their votes. Republican Representative Mike Lawler, who was seeking re-election in New York’s 17th Congressional District, also urged people not to leave polling stations without voting.
The problem started after a change was made to a local election contest in one municipality, according to Westchester County officials. Officials said voters could continue filling out paper ballots and place them in orange emergency ballot bags.
