Scanners Fail in Westchester, Bomb Threats Empty Polling Places and Precincts Stay Open Late. Fix the Problems, Skip the Rumors.

The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.

Election Day did not go perfectly, and it never does. Ballot scanners failed across a New York county that holds a closely watched House race. Bomb threats emptied polling places in Ohio and Michigan. Several states kept a handful of precincts open late. But a group that tracks election threats for state and local officials said Tuesday afternoon that it had seen limited threat activity and that most problems were resolved quickly. Here is what was reported during the day. This story does not report results.

Westchester's Scanners

The biggest problem came in Westchester County, New York. Up to 300 machines started having problems when polls opened at 6 a.m., CBS News New York reported. The state Board of Elections said a programming change had been made for Election Day voting in one municipality, but machines elsewhere in the county kept the original programming and could not accept the ballots. The board said the scanners rejected the ballots rather than counting them wrong. "Every valid vote will be counted," the board said. County Executive Ken Jenkins called the situation "completely unacceptable" and said a bipartisan team will investigate.

Voters filled out paper ballots that went into orange emergency ballot bags. ABC7 New York reported that Jenkins said the machines were not hacked. ABC7 said that when voting ended at 9 p.m. Eastern, the bags were to be driven under police escort to the county Board of Elections, where 10 machines would scan the ballots under the supervision of attorneys from both sides. ABC7 said the scanning would take several hours. Most of northern Westchester is in New York's 17th Congressional District, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler faces Democrat Cait Conley. ABC7 reported that both candidates urged voters to stay in line.

Threats and Late Openings

In Toledo, Ohio, voters at Beverly Elementary were told to leave Tuesday morning because of an apparent bomb threat, 13 ABC reported. The Lucas County Board of Elections said poll workers and voters were evacuated safely, and voters went back inside shortly after noon. In Michigan, a bomb threat forced the evacuation of Carlson High School in Gibraltar, a polling place for Brownstown Township voters. WDIV reported that voters kept casting ballots in the school's parking lot and that police identified a suspect, with charges expected.

North Carolina's State Board of Elections voted to extend voting at five precincts in four counties because voting stopped during the day, the board announced. The longest extension, to 8:15 p.m., was at a courthouse in Tabor City in Columbus County. The board said that with about 2,625 polling places statewide, it is not unusual for minor issues to cause brief disruptions. Votes from people who arrive after 7:30 p.m. at those precincts are provisional.

In Pennsylvania, machine set-up problems delayed the opening of three Chester County polling places, and a county court granted them a 30-minute extension to 8:30 p.m., The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Votes cast after 8 p.m. there are provisional.

The Bigger Picture

The Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center said in a 3 p.m. Eastern update that most cases had been resolved quickly, Nextgov/FCW reported. "So far, we have not seen evidence of significant cyber incidents," said Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology and a former election security official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Nextgov also reported that some Fulton County, Georgia, voters received texts falsely saying their polling place had moved, and that in Florida's Broward County a feature meant to check that each voter got the correct ballot held up voting when polls opened at 7 a.m., until it was fixed by 7:20 a.m. It said online rumors were blaming Democrats for the disruptions, and that a fact-checker traced a fake story about 20,000 fraudulent ballots in a Houston storage facility to an account that regularly posts satire.

If something went wrong at your polling place, read Voting Today? ID, Provisional Ballots and Your Rights at the Polls.

Opinion:

A failed scanner is not a stolen election, and a delayed precinct is not a conspiracy. Elections are run by ordinary people in church halls and school gyms, and machines break. What matters is what happens next. Today, the backups mostly worked: paper ballots, sealed bags, courts that extended hours by the minute, and watchers from both parties in the room.

That does not excuse the failures. Westchester's officials owe voters a full public accounting of how one local change knocked out scanners across a county, and whoever called in bomb threats against voters should be prosecuted. Conservatives are right to demand clean, secure elections. That is exactly why we should not pass along wild rumors. A false story about thousands of fake ballots helps no honest voter and makes real problems harder to fix.

Scripture's word for election officials is plain: "Let all things be done decently and in order." Count every lawful ballot, explain every mistake and be patient tonight. Truth does not need to be rushed.