LIVE ELECTION UPDATES: Democrat Kathy Hochul wins reelection for governor in New York

And we are coming on the air with breaking news this election day. Right now, Westchester election officials are addressing problems at polling sites as voting machines remain down. Now, the County Board of Elections is giving an update right now on the ballot issues. Let's listen in. The Board of Elections is in charge of running elections, and they report up to the state. They are bipartisan. They have a Democratic commissioner. who is Tejan Nelson and a Republican commissioner who is Doug Colty. The Westchester County Board of Elections wants to reassure every voter that their votes matter and their votes are going to be secure and counted. So one, they're not turning away voters. We're not saying come back later. The Board of Elections has been working to fix this issue while at the same time allowing people to vote. Voters at the polling locations today will fill out their ballot as they would normally do it. They come in, they get a ballot, make sure they're registered, they sign in, they get a paper ballot, they go, they do their vote, and then when they get to the scanner, They'll be directed by the poll inspectors to do something. Sometimes that's to put it into an orange bag. Sometimes that may be putting it into another colored bag, but the poll inspectors will tell them to do that. We are reminding people, it says from the Board of Elections, do not pull the ballot, do not write anything else on it, just fill it out like you normally would do. The ballots are going to be placed in that designated emergency bag which is orange. Those bags or bins are secured. They are remaining monitored. Those ballots will be subsequently counted in accordance with applicable election procedures. That's how we use the vote. We should strongly encourage all the voters to remain in line, exercise patience and more importantly cast their ballots. Let us be absolutely clear, every eligible vote will be counted, no voter should be discouraged from participating in this election because of this issue. Your voice matters and your vote matters. Please stay in line and vote. Now, that's one issue. The other is, how did this happen? Because the situation is completely unacceptable. My job is to look out for the voters here in Westchester and you're furious and I am as well. We're a county of over one million people and we have many pivotal races today including two congressional races in the 16th and the 17th congressional districts. I've directed our county officials including representatives from our law department, our county attorney, to monitor this voting process and ensure that voters can cast their ballots without interference and that every vote is properly counted and accurately counted. Today is the immediate focus, but after today, we're going to convene a bipartisan team to conduct a thorough review of the decisions and failures that led to this debacle and determine where accountability lies and ensure that this never happens again. We know that here in the county and everywhere, Westchester County voters deserve a fair, secure, and seamless election process. Today that has fallen short of that standard. The voters all deserve better and we intend to make sure that they get it. Obviously, if there's any issues, there's a voter assistance hotline for New York State, which is 1-844-NEW-YORK-VOTES, and we are working through this problem feverishly. As we've been speaking, there was some voting machines that have been turned up in those locations. The scanner has been put into practice in Tarrytown, was the first notice that I received, and that'll continue on in the... These voting locations where at least one of the scanners is going to be turned up. We call them the Plan B scanners to be able for voters to walk in the door. Those people that have already voted, that's the process that the Board of Elections will determine how that moves forward. Those are considered emergency ballots, and those, by law, do not get counted until after the polls close at 9 o'clock. But there are various challenges in doing that with the number of ballots that there are. So there are communications going forth right now with the State Board of Elections and the County Board of Elections to determine how they're going to proceed. With that I'm happy to take any questions. Yes ma'am. Right now we don't have a full answer on what that is. We know that it was a printer problem right and we don't know why that exactly happened but whatever reasons that was it was really unacceptable that that happened. Some people have asked why didn't we have any of these issues in early voting and as everyone may or may not know that you can vote in any one of the 25 early voting locations. You can vote anywhere around the state in the early voting locations, and the ballot actually gets printed on site. So they don't have to know that. When we get to election day, out of our 350 different polling locations close to 2,000 election districts that we have in Westchester that the actual ballots are printed ahead of time and there was some kind of glitch in that from our printer so we're working through that right now but again after this we'll do some review and understand what Problem there was. It was not a problem with the machine. The concern for all of us was whether or not it was a software issue or whether machines were hacked, you know, those kind of things. And certainly none of that is true. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Sir, what did the BOE tell you about how they would be counted afterwards? Are they going to have to be counted by hand, or can you feed them through a machine once you calibrate the machine to take the paper? Absolutely. Great question. They can be scanned afterwards. That was the whole point. The machine, after the application has been updated, which is what is happening now, the scanner has been updated with the error that happened from the printer, and then we'll be able to move forward. That's what happened in Tarrytown. They're actually going through polling locations. They're starting in the upper part of Westchester at the 113 polling locations that are in the upper part of Westchester. They're going to each one of those polling sites to turn up that one machine, and people will be able to place their ballots in the scanner. And that problem will be resolved for those individuals, for those who have voted earlier today before their polling location scanner works. They'll go into emergency ballots. Those are the orange bags. Yes, sir. Just for you, sir. One, did anybody test this process before today with the ballots and machines that were supposed to be used? We don't know that information. I don't have that information yet. I am confident that they test all the time because that's in the state election law, that they have tests that happen every 60 days, even when elections aren't taking place. So we'll understand what the issues were as part of that postmortem, and we certainly will have the appropriate personnel accountable for that. And just so I understand, so the ones that go into the orange... The orange. Are they going to be counted on site at those polling sites, or are they going to go somewhere else? Right now, that is what the Board of Elections, the state, and the county Board of Elections folks are determining, because right now the law is that those ballots are considered emergency ballots. So those emergency ballots, if they don't go in the machine, they are automatically termed as emergency ballots and they can't be counted by law until after 9 o'clock at night. And certainly because of the activity that we have in the elections this year, there's just a tremendous number of people that are voting, which is a great thing. So the Board of Elections is trying to determine whether or not the centralized opportunity is better than people having that on site. As we all know, the election results on an evening are always unofficial. For just that reason. So we don't have that determination. They will tell us what they're doing. We'll go on this one side and then go back. Does it make sense how many people have to vote that way? This morning when the at about midday. I heard that there were 57,000 votes that had occurred, so maybe that was the 11 o'clock number, so 57,000 people had voted. For early voting comparison, for the nine days, we had 120,000 people vote in early voting, so that was about 28% of the vote at that time. It's going to continue to move on in that direction with the huge number of people that want to participate in this year's election. Please account the scanner. The orange ballots are not going into those. Those are done. The scanner being fixed is only to allow people moving forward to vote on it. Moving forward. Correct. And the question is, for the ballots that are deemed emergency, again, based on the state law, it is an emergency ballot, and that usually gets counted after 9 o'clock in the evening. And again, because of the high number of people that are turning out to vote on our elections this year, it is a challenge, and the Board of Elections is going to work with the County Board of Elections. The Republican and Democratic commissioners will work with the state Democratic and Republican commissioners to come up with a plan. Yes, ma'am. I'm Marylin Buckley, which is my family. When exactly this problem was discovered, and do you expect that some of these emergency scanners will be physically installed in every single polling site for the remainder of the night in Westchester County? OK, I'm going to ask the second one first. The emergency, we have the emergency, the Plan B, those are the ones for the ballot marking devices. So there's two pieces of that machinery. One is a ballot marking device for people that are handicapped, so a handicap accessibility for people that are blind. Yes, ma'am. Hi, Stephanie. No, they're not. So what happens is we actually have a set for Westchester County. Our county board of legislators had authorized and we've been doing this for years. We have a separate set of machines that we utilize for early voting so that we're able to preserve the integrity of that, even though it's just a chip that we have in all those machines, as well as a separate set of voting machines for election day. Yes, they're delivered to all those locations. It is a huge process for them to do that. And logistically, they're there to get up the moving machine, the movers that bring them out to the polling locations, secure them, go into the different places, and then also the polling inspectors that have to be out there. So it's a different set of people usually. It was discovered today let's see the first text I got about it was about five minutes after six when someone said that they went to go to the polling site and they couldn't vote like they said the machine wasn't working so they filled out their ballot and then it filled out the ballot they went to put in the scanner the scanner rejected it and they said okay they put it in they used their regular procedures and put it into the emergency bag the orange bag and that just kept going from there so those are those are getting reprogrammed so There's one in each voting location. Certainly, we want to make sure to accommodate every voter. It's just not the same number. But in each polling location, there's at least that one scanner. So someone asked whether it would take longer. Certainly, it may take longer because you may have multiple scanners. But the hardest part or the longest part of voting is actually filling out the circles, not the scanning part. So we're hopeful that... As they continue to turn up these machines, again, they went up to the northern part of Westchester to about 113 locations. They expect that they're going to be able to do that as quickly as possible. They have to test, right? They don't just put in the chips and say everything's good, right? They have to do some test votes to make sure that things are okay, and they zero things out and go from there. The issue was that there was a printer error, so what happens is whatever problem, whatever problem occurred, we have to have physical pieces of paper that are the ballots, and those go to a specific printer to do that, and there was some kind of glitch in that system according to the Board of Elections, and that's why we have this issue. In the one place where there wasn't an issue, I'm not going to name the place, right, in the one place that didn't have the issue, they voted five. Right. Everywhere else, every other municipality in the county had an issue. So, again, they've been going to those plan B machines and reprogramming that scanner, leaving the other ones alone and then moving from there. They didn't know anything, but they just came in and voted regularly. That's it's not the community's issue. It's not. It's something that happened in the board elections. And again, we're going to figure that out with the board of elections and the printer. And we'll all figure this out together after we get through today. MR. No, why was there one – why was there one place? Because that was the printer's error. That was what was the problem. So whatever problem was with the printer, the printer file utilized for the wrong file, right? So that one community was fine, and everywhere else in the county, the other 44 municipalities had issues. So that's where we are. I cannot tell you that. We'll make sure to go backwards after this particular process and the Board of Elections. And again, there'll be some accountability to understand what happened and why that happened because it shouldn't, right? It's unacceptable. There's not a question about that. You know, again, we expect elections to be flawless. We pay a lot of money from a county perspective to fund the Board of Elections and those things happen, but unfortunately they do. So, yes, sir. On a normal basis, we don't have that many, all right, so in this case, again, if you think that out of the voting that's happened today, that none of those, or the earlier ones in specific locations, none of those got counted yet, right, that may mean a couple hundred thousand votes, right, so, right, so maybe it's up to 250,000 is the maximum number, right. So again, remember, you know, it's an energetic election year, statewide offices, congressional race and all those things. For us, it is a huge number of things. And that's part of the Board of Elections dilemma. So whether or not they're going to be able to have that centralized location, how do you get those ballots there? And they're working through that right now. But that's not up to us. That's what will be up to the Board of Elections. They'll be able to use the updated machines to scan through it, so it won't be as time-consuming as doing a hand count. But in New York State, as you know, that's why we have paper ballots in the first place, right? So you have a receipt of that paper. You can go back and count it again. That's why the results for us initially are unofficial. And if I remember my state law correctly, if it's within 5%, the numbers of elections are within 5%, it's an automatic recount. So again, all those things will be in place and I'm confident that people's votes are going to count and that the calculations will be good. No, no, the hand count that was being suggested is when you actually have someone physically hand count them, and that is long, tedious, and it may have challenges on its own, you know, with error rates. So, again, I think that everyone should just make sure that the main message is that people are going to be able to continue to vote, make their voice heard, and the counting will resume or assume as normal when we get back through these machine issues. Yes, sir, one more. I have no idea because, again, it's 332 actual locations. I rounded up to 350. 332 actual physical locations. Thank you. I don't know, but like I said, the first call that I got about it was about a half hour after they went out. So if they get to the place and maybe it takes 10, 15 minutes to do all of the reprogramming and testing, hopefully we'll have at least those places by the middle of the afternoon, early afternoon, before the evening rush, that we'll have those machines up and running like normal. There is a chance, but again, that's up to the Board of Elections. There's two different versions of that. If it goes back to the Board of Elections warehouse and does the centralized counting, that won't happen today, right? You know, there's not a way of doing anything today, and a question for that with early voting especially, the law requires the early votes to be released at XYZ time during the evening. I don't think that anybody would want to see early votes without regular votes tabulated in there as well, so we'll see. That's up to the Board of Elections and the State Board of Elections and the County Board of Elections, and again, We don't manage them. We're just trying to answer questions along the way. Yes, sir. Thank you. We're really hopeful that we'll have enough information that people will be able to have some confidence on what the vote outcome is. Only time's going to tell. I mean, a patient, from my perspective, if it has to be centrally counted, it has to be centrally counted, and I'm confident in speaking to all of the people that are on the ballot. I am not this year, right? Of all those folks that are on the ballot, they'd rather have an accurate count than a fast count. So they'd rather make sure that it's right and take the time to do it right as opposed to having information that's inaccurate be out in the world in the atmosphere. That was just the general number that the Board of Elections mentioned to us, that they thought that it was about 250,000 votes if you had no early voting. And again, we had 120,000 people voting early voting. I don't know what the breakout of that is. I'm going to do it one more time. As long as you're in line by 9 o'clock, your vote is going to count. And the state has not determined that there needs to be extra time because, again, remembering the two portions of this process, this is putting the ballot in the scanner. The majority part that takes the longest part of time it takes is to... Fill the circles out and do the SAT parts of the score for those and for those folks that may have ballot initiatives. I don't think we have any in the county, but maybe some local municipalities do. But yes, at the end of the day, we really, really hope that no one decides not to vote because of this issue. They shouldn't. They should make sure that they get out to make sure to exercise their their voice and their vote because it's going to count. And make sure that they do that. Don't get off the line. Keep moving forward. So if you get there by 9 o'clock, your vote is going to be counted Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Can we tell you, if those machines for people that can be who have challenges, physical or visual, if they're already in place for them to vote in, why have you reprogrammed? Because, again, the program was the same for everyone, right? So whatever the error was between the printer and the programming for that printer, right, it was across the board. So now we're able to understand, they were able to identify what the issue was. It took them a while to get to that issue. Initially, people were told that it was the paper because the thickness of the paper, and that was not the case. They said that the issue was with the ballot itself, the printed ballot itself. And they said they identified how it got to be this case, and now they're trying to resolve it. And instead of being able – they know they don't have enough time to reprogram, like, hundreds, 900 machines. They think they can get through the 300. The 300 that were – The people who say the Plan B special needs machines. Yes, ma'am. So just for reporting purposes, and I think this is what we're trying to get at, when you say it's a printing issue, there was – we understand and correct us if we're wrong. At the polling sites for early polling, they've printed their own paper at the polling sites, so all those work. The Board of Elections prints the ballot at the site based on where you live. Right. So, but today, for the general election, the paper ballots came from somewhere else. They're pre-printed. And they may have been a different size. It's not the size of them. It was just a straight error in the barcoding of it. So, that's really what... So, it's not the fitness. It's something... On the ballot itself, so the machines didn't change, the calibration of the machines, the size of the machines, it's strictly something on the ballot with the barcode. Correct. From the printer, that's what we were told, again, that there was a printer error, and that printer error, except for that one community, everything was screwed up because of that. So that is the question, read the ballot. The machines can read the ballots now when they get reprogrammed? Right. Correct. It's not the size of the paper. It's not the thickness of the paper or anything like that. That was the initial call that there was a problem with that, but that was not accurate. That was the original concerns, that there might be a software issue, there might be a software glitch, there might have been a hack of something like that. That just was not the case with the determination at the end of the day, was that there was a printer error when the ballots that were pre-printed for the individual polling locations. It's amazing. So it's... Because they didn't go through the scanner, they're emergency ballots. It's the same ballot. It's not a new one. It's not an affidavit ballot. It's not somebody that says, I'm a registered voter, and they don't appear in the rolls, so they let them fill out an affidavit ballot and check that later on. That process still is in place. This is a regular person coming in to vote at the polling location they're supposed to come to. They came, they got their ballot, and they just couldn't put the thing in the machine. They rejected it. The reason I say that is because the orange bags usually don't have this many ballots going into emergency category, so they were running out of space in the orange bags. So they were able to either go to some other counties. So we had other counties that were out there. New York State was very helpful in going to other boards of elections to be able to bring those down to those polling locations. Now those have to get to polling locations. And while they're waiting in between, they're utilizing these other bags that they secure. There's a lot of things that happen in the board of elections. But those are, don't get with the colors, right? Some of us are colorblind, right? I'm not, but some of us are colorblind. Stephanie, we don't want to get involved in that. But at the end of the day, it's still the same issue. It was unconscionable that we have this issue that's going on. It is terrible that this is going on, and especially in an election year that we have so much going on. But we don't expect that. We are going to go backwards and work. We're in a bipartisan way going to understand what the issues were, but the Board of Elections, again, does not report to us in the county office building, and we want to continue to say that because a lot of times people think that the Board of Elections works for me and for our team, and that's not the case. They work and they report with the state, but at the end of the day, it is not what was supposed to happen, period. Yes. A lot of people I talked to this morning, they're upset, and they're saying they do not trust it. I mean, overwhelmingly, that's the sentiment out there. And there was another reporter on Fox 5 that talked to people that the majority expressed the same thing. Not everybody, but most of them. What do you say to those people that are like, look, we don't trust these emergency beds? Well, the truth is, is that from our election process, because we have so much bipartisanship in those, and that's not new, that you have a Democrat and a Republican, and all the poll workers are divided equally, the Board of Elections folks are divided equally, they don't walk... Anywhere by themselves, you know, you don't have one person do that. I would tell them, again, that you have to have confidence and trust in the system. You filled out this piece of paper. This piece of paper is going to be able to be counted. That's why in New York State we do it this way as opposed to doing like the touch screen kind of version of things. There is not a question at the end of the day that you took your vote, you made your vote count, and do not, do not feel. Uncomfortable in doing that, it's like, listen, we're all looking at this, the candidates are all looking at this as well. I mean, there's not anyone that's engaged in this process that wants to not make sure that someone feels their vote counted, right? It is very difficult to say, oh, well, you should trust it. Well, that's what happens all the time when people ask about I want to ask about recounts and recanvass. When those things happen, when recanvassing and recounting happens on ballots, are you in the room? Am I in the room? No. The Board of Elections Democrat and Republicans are in the room and being able to make sure that they have their proper attorneys and all that other kind of things there. So again, it is not something that anyone feels comfortable about. Like I said, it is not acceptable. This is not the way that this should be going. There's not a question about that. But do not, do not lose your opportunity to make your voice heard, right? That's what I would say to all of you. And it's valid and it's canon. They still go through the machine in the scanner, as you said. There's a... This happens all the time in the Board of Elections, right? Again, when you have to hand count and recount districts and people win by two or three votes and they go backwards and they go back and forth, the automatic re-canvas, that happens. That's a regular process for those folks. It's not going to take weeks to determine what things are happening. counting by hand. When we think about hand counting, you know, your colleagues in the room, when you said hand counting, they think about you taking a piece of paper and somebody taking a stroke record and doing that. And that is what happens in a hand count. That is not what's happening here, that they're going to feed this into a machine, into the scanners. And yes, with a Democrat and a Republican standing there watching the pieces of paper. I mean, it is really, really something that there's checks and balances on for that. A vendor, right, so a vendor pre-printed the ballots, and at the end of the day, again, we're going to go back, and there'll be some accountability for that, because it's unconscionable that happened. It shouldn't have happened, right? I don't know the vendor, right? So, we'll have that information to be able to report for you at that time after all that analysis is done, but for today, based on the concerns that everyone has about this, to make sure that their vote is going to count, that people should be out there continuing to vote, making sure that their vote is going to count, and that they're going to be able to vote. Voice is heard. There's not a question about that. Yes, sir. Just to clarify one more. Referring to the machines that are being moved out to these places now, the one at each polling site or the ones that were already there that weren't working this morning are going to be reprogrammed? So the Plan B machine is physically there. There's no new machines arriving anywhere. Those machines exist already. Those machines are being reprogrammed. The Plan B, the handicapped accessible machines are being, scanner is being reprogrammed to be able to scan the ballots, right? There's only one in each location right well and in the polling location that I that I voted in for early voting there's two right there's two scanners um and there's for us in Yonkers at that particular point there's like maybe Six or seven different election districts, which probably average 600 people each. So, again, you know, there's people that early voted, like me. I early voted. My family early voted. Some people vote by mail. There's a lot of things that are happening here. I think at the end of the day, it's going to be fine as far as those folks are concerned. But, again, it's a challenge. Yes. Any additions to that? There's no machines being added. The machines are already there. Again, that's part of the challenge in this was to say, well, do you try to reprogram every machine? And that answer is no. You just don't have enough time to do that. But you have at least one machine that's there. That's not the regular machine, by the way. It's not the regular scanners that are there that they can utilize and count the votes on site. Great? Yes, sir. You hold that. Sorry. I've got time to mix it back. I heard that the study was not on site today. I have no idea about that. I mean, again, Commissioner Nelson, you know, is the Democratic commissioner that I generally speak to. I saw Christine Skelton, who is the deputy commissioner at the Board of Elections. You know, you could ask the folks at the Board of Elections that question because, again, they don't report to us. All right. Thanks a lot, everybody. Appreciate that. Right. Mr. Mayor, it's always good to see you. See you all in a bit. May the justin rush. And we've just heard from Westchester County . . . Executive Ken Jenkins on the ballot issues . . across the county. And as we've said, . . . if you voted in Westchester today, your vote will count . . . despite the issues that have been happening at the polls. . . . And of course, we will continue . . coverage of Election Day in Westchester and across the region. . . . . And we'll bring you the . . very latest updates from the polls on the air, . . . online, and of course, on our free News 12 app. . . .