US Midterm Voting Goes Largely Smoothly, With Scanner Problems in New York

Voting in the United States' midterm elections took place on Tuesday, November 3, and The Guardian reported that it went relatively smoothly nationwide, with only a handful of issues and minimal glitches at polling locations. The most significant problem came in Westchester County, New York, where voting machines were unable to scan as many as 250,000 ballots at 332 polling locations.

Some machines in the county did not accept paper ballots. County Executive Kenneth Jenkins said voters could still cast ballots using emergency ballots placed in sealed orange bags, which would be counted later. County election officials said the scanner problem resulted from a program update, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Parts of Westchester fall within New York's 17th congressional district, where Republican Mike Lawler faced a close race to keep his seat.

Elsewhere, problems were smaller and more varied. In Kansas, a polling place ran out of ballots after a county clerk error led to 100 paper ballots being ordered instead of 100,000. In Georgia, officials asked for permission to rescan more than 1,000 early votes after malfunctions involving two scanners, which read and tally paper ballots.

In Mississippi, officials reported a precinct, meaning a local voting district, that opened late, along with temporarily unavailable voting machines, accessibility problems on a state agency website, and voters checking their registration status. In Tennessee, voters reported that touchscreen machines selected Republican candidates when they tried to select Democratic ones. Polling locations in Tennessee and Oklahoma used emergency bins for ballots with complications, to be counted after polls closed on Tuesday.

In Milwaukee, minor voting issues were attributed to poll worker error. In Massachusetts, technical difficulties in four precincts were rectified that morning, officials said.

North Carolina's State Board of Elections was to decide whether to extend voting by four hours in counties affected by technical difficulties. The release of election results in the state was delayed from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The voting covered all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, and 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate, according to Reuters.