Machines in at least three election districts broke down Tuesday leading to uncounted votes and unfinished business for candidates in the race for District 2 county legislator and for the contest for two town board seats.
Bedford GOP Chairman Don Scott said that he knew of two districts in Bedford and one in Mt. Kisco that reported problems with their machines. Bruce Yablon, chair of the Bedford Democratic Committee, said there were uncounted votes in four election districts in Bedford.
The Westchester County Board of Elections results have not changed since Tuesday night, and show the with 54 percent of the vote, with 42 of 52 districts reporting.
Democrats Chris Burdick and David Gabrielson a in retaining their seats on the town board. Burdick and Gabrielson obtained 41 percent and 31 percent of the vote, respectively, with 13 of 18 districts reporting.
Neither Republican candidate has made a concession in their respective race and last night both said that too many votes were outstanding to make a decision. While that may change over the next several hours or days, it's certain that issues with the voting machines caused their state of limbo.
"We've been through two elections and a primary with these machines and there are issues that have to be looked at," said Scott. "Its frustrating for the candidates, it's caused elections inspectors to quit their jobs and it will cause people [voters] to lose faith in the system."
It's unclear when the machines will be opened up and votes will be counted but based on past elections the process could take days or up to a few weeks. It took five weeks to in the 89th Assembly Race in 2010.
Yablon said based on information from poll watchers and results from election districts in past years, he was confident that when votes were counted his party's candidates would maintain their leads and win re-election.
"We expect Pete Harckham’s margin to remain unchanged and David Gabrielson's to be at least 200 votes over Luke Vander Linden in the worst case analysis and about 350 in the best," he said.
Paper jams, error messages and human error were some of the across-the-board issues that caused problems county-wide, according to Tajian Jones, assistant to Reginald Lafayette, Democratic elections commissioner. "There were also a limited number of technicians to help," she said.
In Bedford, both Yablon and Lisbeth "Boo" Fumagalli, town clerk, witnessed voter frustrations with the process and failures of the machines themselves.
"Polling inspectors were calling for the return of lever machines. We had more break down than ever before and what concerns me is that when technicians did show up to fix the machines, some couldn't repair them," said Fumagalli.
Yablon, however, said the overall system was a good one. "It's not flawless, and I hope to sit down with the commissioner after all this has shaken out to make some suggestions, but we can get a lot of data from these machines that we couldn't before."