Scanner failures, a bomb threat and a website crash: the Election Day voting problems

As of 6:09 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026

Voting in Tuesday's midterm elections went ahead in most places without major trouble, but scanner failures, a bomb threat, a website crash and check-in glitches disrupted voting in several states. Officials said voters could still cast ballots, though in Toledo some ballots cast after the normal closing time will be counted only if a court orders it.

This story covers how voting was run. It does not report results.

Westchester County, New York

Ballot scanners at polling places across Westchester County rejected ballots starting when polls opened at 6 a.m. Poll workers had voters finish their paper ballots and put them in orange emergency ballot bags so they could be scanned later, County Executive Ken Jenkins said at an afternoon news conference reported by The Examiner News.

Jenkins said ballots were rejected at polling places in 44 of the county's 45 municipalities. He blamed a barcode error on Election Day ballots that a vendor printed in advance, and said the problem was not caused by the thickness of the paper or by a hack. "The situation is completely unacceptable," he said, and promised a bipartisan review once voting ended. Early voting was not affected, he said.

The Board of Elections gave a different explanation. In a statement reported by CBS New York, the board said a programming change was made for one municipality, but machines elsewhere in the county kept the original programming "and therefore could not recognize and accept the ballots." The board said the scanners rejected ballots rather than counting them incorrectly and that "every valid vote will be counted." It said its priority was to get at least one machine working again at every polling place.

New York Attorney General Letitia James told voters on X to stay in line and said her office was monitoring the situation.

Fulton County, Georgia

Fulton County said two scanners failed at two early-voting sites during advance voting. That left 1,069 ballots, out of more than 328,000 cast, identified for possible rescanning on guidance from the Georgia secretary of state's office, the county said.

At a meeting Tuesday evening, the county's elections board voted 3-1 to approve the plan, 11Alive reported. All 361 ballots cast on the Mechanicsville Library scanner will be rescanned. For the 708 ballots cast on the Hugh C. Conley Recreation Center scanner, staff will first try moving the scanner's memory card to another machine and will rescan only if that fails. The county said the work would be done in public view. The board's lone Republican member, Julie Adams, voted no. She wanted to try the original scanner first.

North Carolina

The State Board of Elections met Tuesday afternoon and voted to extend voting at five precincts in four counties after voting was stopped there during the day. The new closing times were 8:15 p.m. at South Williams-Tabor City Courthouse in Columbus County; 7:55 p.m. at Como Fire and Rescue and 8 p.m. at Murfreesboro 1-Murfee Center in Hertford County; 8 p.m. at K8 Holloway Recreation Center in Lenoir County; and 7:45 p.m. at Wilson City Recreation Building in Wilson County.

Under state law, people who arrived at those sites after the normal 7:30 p.m. closing time voted provisionally. The board said it would not post statewide unofficial results until every polling place had closed. The News & Observer reported that the board decided not to extend hours at precincts in Gates, Watauga and Wilkes counties.

Toledo, Ohio

The polling place at Beverly Elementary School in south Toledo was evacuated after a bomb threat Tuesday morning. Police responded at about 10:27 a.m. and cleared the building at about 12:15 p.m., according to WTOL. A Toledo police spokesperson said no explosives were found and called the threat non-credible.

Shortly before polls closed, Lucas County Common Pleas Judge Ken Walz granted an Ohio Democratic Party request, WTOL reported. His order let people in line between 7:31 and 9:15 p.m. vote provisional ballots, which will be kept sealed and counted only if the court orders it. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told WTOL he "very much" disagreed with the ruling and planned to challenge those ballots.

South Carolina and Broward County, Florida

The South Carolina Election Commission's website, which voters use to find their polling place, went down Tuesday morning, WIS reported. It came back, crashed again after a reboot, and was working by about 11 a.m. Conway Belangia of the commission told voters they could check their county's website instead.

In Broward County, a new feature that scans a barcode to confirm each voter gets the right ballot wrongly flagged some ballots when polls opened at 7 a.m. That delayed check-ins for about 20 minutes, Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said, according to the Miami Herald. Scott said the problem was fixed by about 7:20 a.m. and did not affect any votes cast. "Nobody voted on the wrong ballot," he said. He asked voters who left during the delay to come back before polls closed.

For more Election Day coverage, see when polls opened and closed across the US and Florida polling places moved because of flooding.