Voting machine malfunction forces Mercer County to tally paper ballots

TRENTON, N.J. - 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. 

"This morning it was determined that the scanner, which is on the tabulator, was not accepting the ballots," Mercer County Board of Elections Secretary Martin Jennings said. 

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. 

CLICK HERE FOR ELECTION DAY RESULTS

"It was determined that what we would do is remove the scanner, people would fill out their ballots just like they would do, but instead of putting it in the scanner they put it in a basket or box where they would have gone had the scanner worked," Jennings said.

New Jersey residents are casting ballots for 12 U.S. House seats in the first election since congressional districts were redrawn in 2020. Polls closed in New Jersey at 8 p.m. 

Jennings suspects the malfunction was a programming error and not a problem with the machines themselves, which are only two years old.