Ballot scanner malfunctions, flurry of federal legal actions test election officials on final day of voting
Early reports of ballot scanner malfunctions in Westchester County, New York are a sign of the challenges election officials will face in the current online information environment as voters head to the polls Tuesday on the final day of voting.
While such equipment failures and breakdowns are not uncommon and happen in a small number of precincts every election cycle, and there is no evidence of foul play, conspiracists quickly jumped on the news.
According to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington who researches online rumors and disinformation tied to elections, the rumors are already spreading within right-wing online circles as evidence of election malfeasance.
Starbird cited metrics showing that posts on X about the scanner malfunctions grew to as many as 100 a minute in the hours after the news was reported, with established election deniers, such as The Gateway Pundit, amplifying conspiracist framings.
The Westchester County Board of Elections said the problems appear related to some ballots being too thick for the machines to accept, leading to rejections. Voters with affected ballots were told to place them in designated orange emergency ballot bags that will be secured, monitored and counted by officials in compliance with election laws.
“The Board of Elections is in constant communication with New York State officials, Westchester County Government and poll workers to address this issue and ensure that voting continues with as little disruption as possible,” the board wrote in a statement. “In the meantime, voters should continue to complete their paper ballots as instructed by poll workers.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office was also monitoring the situation and “is in touch with the state and local Boards of Elections as they work on a solution.”
“Westchester voters can still safely fill out and turn in their ballots at their polling locations,” James wrote on X. “Your votes will count.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice issued a news release announcing charges against 63 individuals, many of them lawful permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for decades and some who later became naturalized citizens with legal voting rights, for allegedly voting as noncitizens in a past election.
The charges are part of a flurry of last-minute actions by the Trump administration to promote the specter of widespread noncitizen voting. The administration also brought lawsuits against states, like California and Alaska, in the past week that have sought to influence how ballots are treated and counted in the upcoming Senate races. Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have thrown them out while reiterating the executive branch has no constitutional or legal role in the administration of state-run elections.
Another federal court ordered the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to stop sending lists of “potential noncitizen” voters to states, after Trump administration lawyers acknowledged in court that the data they rely on for those assertions has a “high” error rate.
Nevertheless, the department continued its aggressive posture, announcing Tuesday that it would be deploying 1,000 election monitors to precincts across all 50 states.
