Westchester Ballot Scanners Reject Paper Ballots on Election Day in Key House Race

Voting machines at most polling sites in Westchester County, New York, rejected paper ballots on Tuesday, Election Day, raising the prospect of delayed results in one of the country's most competitive U.S. House races. The contest pits Republican Rep. Mike Lawler against Democratic nominee Cait Conley. The Westchester County Board of Elections said the problem involved the thickness of the paper ballots, which caused scanners to refuse them. The problems began Tuesday morning during in-person voting. New York's attorney general said her office was monitoring the ballot scanning issue.

Lawler said the board was working with its vendors on a fix and that the cause, whether ballot or machine, was not yet known. He urged voters to stay in line and not leave without voting, saying every ballot would be counted. He said his campaign was already in court seeking to have ballots counted at one central location where campaign staff, election monitors and attorneys could watch the process.

Right-leaning outlets, the Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal, lead with the scanner failures in Lawler's district. The Examiner's headline ties the outage to a delay in counting for Lawler's reelection and quotes his posts on X, including his court action and his assurance that every vote would count. The Daily Signal's account centers on the county board's announcement and describes Lawler as the incumbent defending his seat. Alternative outlets Axios and NewsNation frame it more broadly. Axios calls it chaos in a key battleground and stresses possible delays in results, while NewsNation leads with the attorney general's monitoring and calls the problems widespread. Left-leaning outlets had not reported this story at the time of writing, while right-leaning and alternative outlets had. The excerpts available do not show Conley's response.