The countywide rejection of paper ballots by voting machines Tuesday morning has raised an obvious question among Westchester voters: Why did the machines appear to work normally during nine days of early voting but suddenly refuse to accept ballots on Election Day?

One possible explanation involves a fundamental difference between how ballots are produced for early voting and how they are prepared for Election Day, according to New York state election laws, regulations and Westchester County election training materials. The documents establish that Westchester adopted ballot-on-demand printing for early voting in 2021, while its documented Election Day procedures rely on preprinted ballots distributed in numbered books.

An error printing the ballots is now being attributed as the cause of widespread voting machine failures across Westchester County.Speaking on Election Day, Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins said that more than 200,000 ballots could have been affected by the technical issue at the polls, where the voting machine failures in Westchester County have voters placing ballots into secure bags, rather than feeding them into voting machines.

A countywide voting problem that disrupted Election Day operations across Westchester County was caused by a programming glitch, according to the New York State Board of Elections.

Since officials determined the cause of the issue, all the ballots cast Tuesday can eventually be scanned and Rep. Mike Lawler said there is agreement between both camps to count them after voting concludes, which will be submitted to a judge Tuesday afternoon.

If you vote in Suffolk, or know anyone voting there, be aware that you may not be able to see your choice for governor.  If you don’t, let the poll workers know . They have been instructed to pull the ballot out so you can see who you voted for.  Then call the voting protection hotline, 844-NY-VOTES to report the voting machine malfunction. Be sure to take 844-NY-VOTES with you to the polls so you don’t have to look it up.

“..Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Richer has studied just about every way an election can be attacked. He believes that nearly all the election threats commentators have talked about this year are “overblown.” ...But there is one that still worries him….“I think Fulton County was the real warning shot,” he said. “It showed an increased appetite for actually going into voting jurisdictions and taking tabulation equipment or ballots. And if they do that after all the ballots have been counted and certified, then it’s old hat, and we’ll defend the election if it’s defensible against liars. If they do it during a live election, I don’t know what we do.” The problem is the same one that preoccupied Henderson: chain of custody over ballots.”

President Donald Trump has already put the wheels in motion for a “legal” reversal of the voters’ choice in Texas, Alaska and other battleground states where the US Senate’s control is in the balance.

MSNOW "Two people who work closely with state election officials told MS NOW that election administrators for months have gamed out scenarios they never before considered, including what to do if federal agents show up at polling places, what to do if the top election official is taken into custody, and how to use mobile voting equipment to fill the void if a polling place is taken offline because of a raid by federal law enforcement.

On Tuesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James reminded voters — which also read as a warning to the Trump administration — that armed federal officers are not allowed at polling places under state and federal law.”

Newsday: “..the Suffolk County legislature approved allocating $35 million to the county's Board of Elections to purchase thousands of ExpressVote XL models made by Election Systems and Software.. "'It has really great features’. “  

Comment: Watch the 2 minute video on how “easy” it is to use the Expressvote XL. A menu bar? Instead, $35 million dollars could buy a whole lot of pens to mark the ballots. Pens can be easily understood by even a preschooler, and, as an added benefit, can’t be hacked.  Allegra Dengler

An Unusual Request: 

• Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security wanted the agency that protects election systems to get and hack a voting machine, which shocked staffers.
• Undermining Election Security: President Donald Trump has said voting is vulnerable even as his administration has undermined the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is supposed to protect it.
• On Their Own: Election officials across the country say the Trump administration’s attacks on CISA have left them to solve security issues with the midterms approaching."

We promised months ago on The BradCast that there would be plenty of bumps in the road between then and this year’s critical midterm elections. But, as long argued, if we keep eyes on the prize, most of Donald Trump’s blatant, criminal efforts to weaponize the DOJ, DHS and other federal apparatus in hopes of stealing the elections will fail. In fact, many of those efforts are likely to result in even greater failure than he and his party might have otherwise faced.

Trump and his fascist MAGA allies are quickly putting the pieces in place to interfere in the 2026 midterm election.

More states are starting to send mail ballots to voters, opening early voting periods (Arizona just started early voting), and preparing for massive voter turnout as Trump’s unpopularity surges.

The news can barely keep up: private armed security descended on USPS just yesterday; DHS building its own proprietary voter database; ICE beginning to ramp up activity near key polling precincts; DOJ deploying a record number of unaccountable “election monitors” nationwide.

A small group of U.S. national security officials has been discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections, according to people involved in the effort. The group includes about 10 current and former officials with experience in the Defense Department, some of whom have previously focused on countering authoritarianism abroad. Their efforts are motivated not by political bias, they say, but a growing sense of alarm that President Donald Trump will harm American democracy by undermining the integrity of the vote to keep the Republican Party in power.

Politico:  "State and local election officials have spent years preparing for a litany of election threats — from bomb threats at polling places to large-scale disinformation campaigns and state-backed hacking efforts….CISA has recently announced some of its first public election security moves since last year’s cuts. ...Critics have argued that programs outlined in the plan, such as vulnerability scanning for potential software bugs in election networks, are services CISA has already provided states before its election security funding was cut last year.  Some also worry that the directive was issued too close to the midterms to make any real impact."

This Will Hold "Somewhere along the way, questioning the integrity of our elections became more controversial than the vulnerabilities within the election system itself.  And that should terrify every American, regardless of political affiliation.

...We have privately owned voting technology companies, proprietary software, election management systems, third-party reporting vendors, and layers of technology that the average voter couldn’t begin to identify, much less scrutinize. And it’s housed, for the most part, in the far-right ecosystem....We need overwhelming turnout, vigilant citizens, transparent reporting, and candidates prepared to challenge genuine irregularities through the appropriate legal channels.”

“NYTimes: “Good people of both parties and independents are going to have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow this to take place,’” Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said of the possibility that President Trump might challenge the midterm results”

With virtually no mention or reporting in the corporate press, Republican-run states are again running the voter purge of millions that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2024. Yesterday morning, Reuters published a special report on the ways the Trump administration could “interfere” with the midterms, noting that a lawyer in Idaho’s Republican attorney general’s office bragged that his state had “taken a leading role in ensuring its voter registration list is purged….” Yep, they used the word “purged.” They’re not even bothering with the polite terms anymore.

Help wanted! What happens after the polls close is going to be especially significant this year. This article describes in detail what should happen when the processes are followed and there is no interference with or undermining of the steps watchers are  entitled to observe. Watchers from each political party, representatives of the candidates, and independent bodies are allowed to be present. Volunteer watchers are needed to observe several steps in the process of counting and certifying the vote, starting with observing the start of the canvass after the closing of the polls on Election Day.  Watchers are also needed to observe curing of mail-in ballots within 5 days, the mandatory 3% audit and any mandatory hand count.  

Comment: Marc Elias didn’t give a complete list of things Trump said, as usual leaving off the issue of the vote-counting computers. Trump also said this, which we can also take literally.

What Trump Said (Verbatim):

“He (Elon Musk) knows those computers better than anybody, all those computers, those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like, in a landslide, so it was pretty good, it was pretty good. So, thank you to Elon.”

Help Recruit Poll Observers!

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6-7:30pm - Zoom

We need hundreds of volunteers across the state to ensure every eligible New Yorker casts their ballot without barrier or intimidation. 

Common Dreams  “...we are learning that Trump allies have been focusing on filling the ranks of election monitors and poll watchers. In the past volunteers in these positions are stationed at polls simply to observe and to assist if called upon to help solve issues that may occur. These new GOP recruits, however, have been weaponized to see their mission to make, not solve, problems. ...All of these disruptive tactics appear to be directed toward preparing a case that will pressure the Republican Speaker of the House to refuse to certify the results of the election—something like a replay of January 2021. It goes without saying that nothing like this has ever happened before. But like so much of what President Trump has already done during his time in office “nothing like this has ever happened before” doesn’t mean it won’t be tried now.”