Ballot Scanner Breakdowns Plague NYC Polling Places

NEW YORK — New Yorkers encountered widespread problems with the machines used to record their votes in Tuesday's midterm elections, adding to long waits caused by unusually high turnout. City officials blamed wet ballots on a rainy Election Day for jamming up scanning machines at dozens of poll sites in at least four boroughs.

It's uncertain how many people were prevented from voting because of the issues, though some reports indicated voters left their polling stations without casting ballots.

The breakdowns were initially reported on social media and through ProPublica's Electionland project, which monitors voting problems around the country. A systemic problem emerged by midday — a hotline run by the state attorney general's office had received more than 40 calls about poll sites with at least one broken scanner as of about 12:20 p.m., a spokeswoman for the office said.

The issues came during a highly anticipated midterm election in New York and across the country. While most New York City races aren't expected to be close, voters turned out in droves to decide contests for governor, U.S. Congress and state Legislature, as well as the fate of three proposed changes to the City Charter on the back of their ballots.

"When you have higher turnout and you have more paper passing through the system you’re going to have some issues," Michael Ryan, the executive director of the city's Board of Elections, told reporters at one poll site.

This year's ballots are unusual because they have two pages that are supposed to be separated from each other and fed into the scanning machine.

Some voters said they were directed to place their ballots in an "emergency" box to be scanned later. Such a procedure is meant to be used when all scanning machines break down, according to the Board of Elections' poll worker manual.

The board said on Twitter that technicians had been sent to polling places experiencing problems. But City Council Speaker Corey Johnson dismissed the board's excuses and called for Ryan's resignation.

"Bad weather and high turnout are no excuse when we have forecasts for both," Johnson said on Twitter. "Michael Ryan needs to resign and we need a full top to bottom review of what went wrong today."

The agency should also train poll workers to fix jammed machines rather than rely on small teams of technicians, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said. He said officials would continue to monitor the problems and urged New Yorkers to stay in the long lines and vote.

"Rain cannot stop voters from being able to cast their ballot," Adams said at the Ingersoll Community Center in Fort Greene, where three of five machines were down Tuesday afternoon.

Meri Bourgard waited more than an hour to vote at PS 29 in Cobble Hill, where two out of five scanners were busted and lines stretched down the block and around the corner early Tuesday morning.

The lack of organization and influx of voters caused chaos, said Bourgard, 72, who is an artist and a professor at the Pratt Institute who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years.

"I have never seen a line like that before, it was the most people I've ever seen come out to vote here," she said. "It usually takes me 20 minutes but they weren't equipped with enough scanners. A lot was going on."

Bourgard watched a jumble of ballots spill out of the voting machine as a worker opened the door to fix it and instructed workers on how to properly maintain the machines.

The polling place had a disorganized setup, with three separate lines and two different rooms containing scanning machines, said Anna Harrington, 43.

The lack of information didn't help confused Brooklynites either, she groused.

"They weren't very informative in telling you where to look for the questions," she said, referring to the trio of questions on the back of the ballot. "I knew that they were there, somewhere, and was looking for them, but other people who didnt know might have missed them."

All three scanners broke down at the Ronald Edmonds Learning Center in Fort Greene, where Margaret Brown Larson said she put her ballot in a emergency box at the end of a 40-minute wait.

"I was very anxious about it and I even said to the poll worker … ‘Are you sure this is going to count?’" said Larson, a stay-at-home mom who has voted at that site since at least 2012. "Because it just seemed like a very strange way to do it."

Voters had been waiting an hour to cast ballots as of about 10:30 a.m. at MS 246 in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where a line snaked around a school gymnasium. Only two of the seven scanners at the school were working Tuesday morning, according to reports from voters.

A woman named Olga, 35, said it took her 90 minutes to vote at the school, but she would have waited three hours if she'd had to.

"My voice needs to heard," she said.

Worried about long lines, Bourgard's husband, who is 86, voted by an absentee ballot even though he lives two blocks from the polling site.

"We were worried about the long lines and it being too much for him to handle," she said. "Looks like we made the right call."

Harrington's husband, Tim, gave up altogether after arriving at 7:45 a.m. and waiting 45 minutes just to get into the polling site. He plans to cast his ballot after work.

Voters at PS 101 in Forest Hills, Queens, said scanners were going down at times, slowing down the process. But they opted to bring their own pens and sneak off to the side to fill out their ballots rather than wait for a polling station.

The school's gymnasium was packed at 10:30 a.m. Joan Levakis, an organizer at the site, said there were lines around the block at when she opened the doors at 6 a.m.

In the 11 years she has been at the site, “This is the first time that has ever happened,” she said.

Forest Hills residents Mubera Kabribegic, Rob Najdek and several other voters said that the the 20 to 25 minutes it took them to vote at PS 101 was not at an inconvenience.

“It’s really not that bad,” Kabribegic said.

Voters can report issues at poll sites by contacting the Board of Elections on Twitter @BOENYC or by calling 866-OUR-VOTE.

Patch editors Caroline Spivack, Kathleen Culliton and Jon Cronin contributed to this report.

(Lead image: Voters wait in line at MS 246 in Flatbush on Tuesday morning. Photo by Kathleen Culliton/Patch)