Officials in Multiple States Report Issues With Voting Machines on Election Day

An elections worker scans mail in ballots at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 7, 2022. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Officials in several states said on Election Day that voting machines were down or not working properly.

All machines in Mercer County, New Jersey, which encompasses Princeton, weren’t working on Nov. 8, according to election officials.

Gay Huber, West Windsor township clerk, attributed the issue to a “county-wide system outage.”

Voters were still able to vote on a standard ballot at polling locations, according to Huber.

A county spokesperson said the Mercer County Board of Elections alerted the county to issues with the machines.

“Poll workers will be on hand to walk voters through the process,” the spokesperson said, noting that it’s working with the machine maker to resolve the issue.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, officials said problems with tabulators were affecting voters.

Tabulators at about 20 percent of polling locations weren’t properly processing ballots, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates said in a video message to voters.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Gates encouraged people to still go to polls and fill out their ballots. They could then place them into secure ballot boxes, the officials said.

“There are issues with the precinct-based tabulators that the paper ballots are fed into. We are aware of the issue and are working to get technicians on site as soon as possible,” the recorder’s office stated separately.

Harris County, Texas, experienced issues with machines.

At one polling location, “serious computer problems” led to only two machines working, a manager told KPRC-TV.

Just 10 out of the 50 machines at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center were functioning according to the manager.

A spokesperson for Harris County Elections told KPRC-TV, “We are well aware of the issues, and we have had all hands on deck to answer the support lines for our election workers to get things resolved as quickly as possible.”

At least several machines went down at a polling location in Indianapolis, a reporter for WXIN-TV wrote on Twitter, citing a poll worker.

U.S. cybersecurity chief Jen Easterly warned before the midterm elections of “errors” and “glitches” during the election.

“That happens in every election. But that’s why there are multiple layers of security controls and resilience built into the system,” Easterly, appointed to direct the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by President Joe Biden, said during a recent talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

“These things are going to happen,“ she said, describing them as normal and ”not nefarious.”