the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Election officials in Mercer County, New Jersey are working to investigate what caused a county-wide voting machine outage on Election Day. The malfunction forced voters at over 130 polling places in Mercer County to fill out a standard ballot and place it into the emergency slot in the voting machine.
In a statement, county officials said the voting machine maker Dominion was working to resolve the problem as voters continued to cast ballots in the state’s midterm election.
Through its Election Integrity Program, the New Jersey Republican State Committee (“NJGOP”) was made aware of voting issues at polling locations in Mercer County shortly after polls opened. While there are issues with ballots being scanned on Mercer County voting machines, voters will still cast their ballots on printed paper and insert them into the voting machine as they normally would.
This impacts the process in so far as ballots that enter the machine unscanned will be preserved through a chain of custody and counted at the Board of Elections at a later time.
The NJGOP released the following statement:
“On behalf of our NJGOP legal counsel and election integrity team, I want to make crystal clear to the voters of Mercer County that in spite of reported problems with scanners on voting machines in Mercer County, this issue does not affect their voting experience at all. Voters will still enter their polling place, cast their vote, and insert the paper ballot into the machine as they normally would.
“Voters can be completely rest assured that NJGOP is ensuring voters’ rights are protected at all phases of the process and that their vote counts.” – Tom Szymanski, Executive Director
Earlier today US House candidate, NJ-12 Darius Mayfield said on twitter , “I’m getting word that the problem still persist with Mercer County Dominion machines. If you live in Mercer County ask for a provisional Ballot at polls and #VOTE Tell you friends & family the same.”
Really here we go, first the lottery machine, now this. What is next. The next president election. It must be just a coincidence, or just Electric glitch.hummmmmm.