Westchester County Ballot Scanners Fail on 2026 Midterm Election Day

A confirmed equipment malfunction at multiple polling sites in a competitive New York county on Election Day creates a documented gap between voters casting ballots and those having ballots...

Ballot scanners at multiple polling sites across Westchester County, New York, stopped accepting ballots during the 2026 midterm election on Tuesday, November 3, according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who posted a statement on social platform X confirming her office was monitoring the situation.

"My office is monitoring this issue with scanners in Westchester and is in touch with the state and local Boards of Elections as they work on a solution," James wrote, according to The Hill. Her statement added that voters could "still safely fill out" their ballots, indicating that paper ballots remained available as a fallback option.

The nature and scope of the scanner failure had not been fully detailed in initial public statements. The number of specific polling sites affected, the make and model of the scanning equipment involved, and the precise time the failures began were not disclosed in the attorney general's public statement as of the time of this report. Those details would be contained in incident reports filed by the Westchester County Board of Elections and any after-action reports submitted to the New York State Board of Elections.

Westchester County is a competitive jurisdiction in statewide elections. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Democrat Kathy Hochul carried Westchester County over Republican Lee Zeldin, according to certified results published by the New York State Board of Elections. The county's 17th Congressional District has also been a targeted race in recent election cycles.

New York State election law, under New York Election Law Section 7-202, requires that paper ballots be made available to voters when scanning equipment malfunctions. Voters whose ballots cannot be scanned are generally directed to deposit paper ballots into an emergency ballot box for later tabulation. Whether that procedure was activated at all affected sites in Westchester County on Tuesday was not confirmed in the attorney general's statement.

The attorney general's office does not have direct authority to operate or repair voting equipment. That responsibility falls to the county Board of Elections and, in an oversight capacity, the New York State Board of Elections. The involvement of the AG's office is limited to monitoring compliance with state election law and voter access requirements.

Equipment failures at polling sites are not unique to this election cycle. The New York State Board of Elections has documented scanner malfunctions in prior election cycles, and federal guidance from the Election Assistance Commission recommends that jurisdictions maintain contingency protocols including paper ballot reserves sized at no less than ten percent of expected turnout per site. Whether Westchester County met that threshold on Tuesday is unknown and would be disclosed in post-election filings with the state.

The timing of the failure, occurring on Election Day itself rather than during early voting, limits the options available to voters who may have already left polling sites before a resolution was reached. Voters who deposited ballots into emergency boxes rather than scanners may face additional uncertainty about whether those ballots will be tabulated in unofficial returns on election night or in subsequent canvass counts.

This story coincides with midterm races across New York State, including competitive congressional contests. As previously reported, Trump Addressed Voters at Reflecting Pool on Midterm Eve, underscoring the national attention on Tuesday's elections.

What remains unknown at the time of publication: the total number of affected sites, the number of voters who attempted to scan ballots during the outage period, the specific cause of the scanner failures, and the timeline for full resolution. The Westchester County Board of Elections incident report and any formal notification to the New York State Board of Elections would be the public records that answer those questions.