Ballot snafu snarls voting in NY's Westchester County amid high profile race between Lawler, Conley

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Nov 3, 2026

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

NEW YORK — Westchester County and New York state officials Tuesday were scrambling to fix a voting machine malfunction on Election Day while insisting all ballots would be counted properly in the closely watched NY-17 district congressional race and other contests.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James and Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins all assured voters to go to their polling places and cast ballots as planned while saying that officials were working to fix the problem involving the machines that scan the ballots.

“Every eligible voter must have a chance to cast their ballot and every vote must be counted,” Jenkins, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The snafu could affect up to 250,000 ballots in 40 municipalities across the suburban county, he said.

Jenkins said the ballots would be taken to the county Board of Elections after polls close at 9 pm and tabulated there.

The problem stemmed from a software update that officials installed to fix a problem in a single municipality. The update wasn’t installed on other machines, leaving them unable to scan ballots.

He admitted the vote count could be delayed and vowed to mount a bipartisan probe of the malfunctioning machines.

It was unclear how or if the problem might impact the high-profile race in NY-17 between Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and Democratic challenger Cait Conley. Both Lawler and Conley called on voters to be patient and to stay in line as long as necessary to vote.

Some national right-wing figures quickly suggested the voting machine screw-up could be some kind of election interference by Democrats.

But Lawler insisted everything was above board and there were “no shenanigans” at work.

The NY-17 district covers the northern half of Westchester, along with parts of other counties that were not impacted by the problems. It’s a key swing suburban district and has long been considered one of the national marquee matchups in the midterms race for Congress.

Westchester accounts for about 40% of the NY-17 electorate and is considered the Democratic stronghold in the district.

That fact might suggest that any lower turnout caused by long waits or uncounted ballots could benefit Lawler. But Republicans are generally more likely to cast their ballots on Election Day as opposed to during early voting.

----------------