Every ballot scanner in Westchester County, New York, stopped accepting paper ballots on Tuesday morning, November 3, 2026, as Election Day voting got under way in the midterm elections — and election officials switched the whole county to an emergency paper procedure while insisting that every vote will still be counted.

Source: Halston Media / Katonah-Lewisboro Times

News 12 reported the problem just before 7 a.m., within the first hour after New York polls opened at 6 a.m. The Westchester County Board of Elections confirmed a countywide problem, and local outlets in town after town — Rye, Lewisboro, North Salem, Croton and Edgemont among them — reported the same picture: voters could check in and mark a paper ballot, but the scanners would not accept it. As of 8:15 a.m. the machines remained out of service, and by later in the morning poll workers told the Croton Chronicle the breakdown had been going on for well over two hours.

Source: MyRye.com

Paper ballots are going into orange security bags

Westchester votes on paper ballots that are normally fed into a scanner at the polling place, and that paper trail is what is keeping voting going today. Poll workers are checking voters in, handing them their regular paper ballot, and — once it is marked — placing it in an emergency orange security bag instead of the scanner. The Town of North Salem told its voters: do not go to another polling location; vote where you are assigned and your ballot will be held in the orange bag until the county Board of Elections can deal with it.

The bags will be delivered to the Board of Elections at the end of the night, and the Board says the ballots inside them will be counted before the ballots cast through machines. In a statement on Tuesday morning the Board of Elections said: "Let us be absolutely clear: Every eligible vote will be counted. No voter should be discouraged from participating in this election because of this issue. Your voice matters. Your vote matters. Please stay in line and vote."

Source: Halston Media / Katonah-Lewisboro Times

The cause is still unknown — and no official has alleged wrongdoing

Nobody in authority has yet said what broke. A Westchester poll worker told Halston Media they had received "no explanation" about the cause and no estimate for a fix. Poll workers were first told the problem was connectivity, but the Croton Chronicle reported that this no longer appears to be the case; suspected causes being discussed locally include software issues and misprinting of Election Day ballots. Those are unconfirmed possibilities, not findings — the Board of Elections has not identified a cause, and no official has alleged interference or misconduct. What is established is a technical failure, reported the same way by the county board, town governments, candidates and voter-protection groups alike.

Source: The Croton Chronicle

Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, who is in a competitive re-election fight in the neighbouring NY-17 district, posted early on Tuesday: "There is a problem with every ballot scanner in Westchester County. We do not yet know the exact cause of the issue, whether it is the ballot or the machine. The Board of Elections is working with their vendors to resolve it. However, every ballot will be counted. Stay on line and vote. Do not leave the polling place without voting." The Board said technicians would be dispatched to polling locations experiencing problems.

Source: MyRye.com

What Westchester voters are deciding today

The ballots being bagged today carry the full midterm slate for the county: Congress, state Senate and Assembly, governor, attorney general, comptroller, judges and local offices. Nationally, these midterms decide control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's second term, and NY-17 is one of the competitive House districts watched across the country — which is why a countywide machine failure in Westchester drew immediate attention from candidates of both parties, all of them delivering the same message: keep voting.

The League of Women Voters of New York State and the Election Protection Coalition put out a joint bulletin confirming the emergency procedure: "Trained poll workers are correctly allowing voters to fill out a paper emergency ballot, which is then placed in a secure ballot bag. Your vote will count." Voters who would rather use a machine, and who have the time, may return once the scanners are fixed — but the League's advice is to vote today regardless. Westchester County District Attorney Susan Cacace also reminded residents that polls run from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and pointed voters with concerns about election-related misconduct to the state Attorney General's Election Protection Hotline.

Source: The Croton Chronicle

For the large Indian and Punjabi diaspora communities of the New York metropolitan area — including families settled across Westchester and the neighbouring suburbs — the practical point of this story is simple: a broken scanner is not a lost vote. A marked paper ballot placed in the orange bag at your own polling place is a cast ballot, and election officials say those bagged ballots will be the first ones counted tonight.

What happens next

The Board of Elections is working with its vendors and sending technicians to polling sites, and local officials say they are preparing for the possibility that the problem continues for an extended period — in which case the orange-bag procedure simply runs all day. Polls close at 9 p.m., and New York voters who are in line when polls close are still entitled to vote. After the polls close, the security bags go to the Board of Elections and their ballots are counted before machine-cast ballots, so Westchester's earliest numbers tonight should include the morning's bagged votes. The county still owes voters an explanation of what failed, and whether it was the machines, the ballots or the software — that answer will matter well beyond one election morning.