North Jersey voters face minor ballot glitches in some towns on Election Day 2023
Election officials and a warehouse crew are helping poll workers with small machine issues and user errors at voting sites across Bergen County.
“No voters were turned away…voters are still voting,” said Debra Francica, superintendent of elections and commissioner of registration. “Voters should ask for help if they’re having trouble from poll workers because workers don’t want to be intrusive.”
Margaret Frontera, Republican commissioner for the Bergen County Board of Elections, agreed. “The first line of defense at the polls are the poll workers, who are trained to call the superintendent’s office and their voting machine division to address any hardware issues,” Frontera said.
Some issues stemmed from voters being unfamiliar with voting machines that were replaced in time for the primary election this year. In April, the Bergen County Board of County Commissioners approved a $15 million bond ordinance to cover the cost of 1,200 ballot-marking machines and 650 tabulators that replaced 30-year-old machines that exceeded their lifespans.
Printer error in Westwood
In Westwood, officials reported voters trying to remove the ballots from the printer before a green check mark appeared on the screen, which indicates the entire ballot was finished printing.
“Some people are touching the ballots before they are supposed to, which jams the printer and smears the ballot and the ballot won’t scan,” Francica said. “It’s a big ballot and prints on both sides. Some people are getting anxious and pulling it out before it’s done printing the second side.”
“The machines are working fine. I think the voters are just not used to it,” Francica said.
Ballots can only be inserted once
Republican Assemblyman Robert Auth tweeted out a Facebook post by a voter who received the message, “There is already a vote recorded for this activation card. Please remove your activation card and notify a poll worker for assistance.”
“The voter would only receive that message if the voter card was not encoded completely by the poll worker at voter check-in,” Francica said.
Westwood Clerk Karen Hughes explained that the message doesn’t mean a voter has already voted, but that the card has already been inserted into a ballot machine.
“In a nutshell, the cards are programmed with the voter’s ballot and can only be inserted one time,” Hughes said. “Once it’s pulled out it’s cleared. If the same voter tries to insert it again it will not show the ballot. The cards are reused over and over all day. If the card reader doesn’t reprogram the card with the ballot correctly, it will show that message when a voter inserts it.”
Hughes said there was another error when a poll worker "inadvertently hit the audio check box on the poll pad when voters checked in, which coded the card to launch the visually impaired feature of the ballot voting machine. All voters were reprocessed to be able to vote without the ballot being read to them.”
Minor issues in River Vale, Paramus, Norwood, Oradell
Republican Sen. Holly Schepisi said she received calls from constituents and officials in four other Bergen County towns experiencing problems at the polls, including River Vale, Paramus, Norwood and Oradel.
Francica said in River Vale, a ballot marking device wasn’t working because it wasn’t plugged in. Her office helped poll workers set up a ballot marking device in Paramus, and sent a technician to Norwood to check on the batteries in the device. Her team delivered a missing middle privacy curtain to Oradell this morning, and walked poll workers through fixing a paper jam at George Washington School in Ridgewood.
“If everything went down, if the power went out, we have emergency ballots preprinted in every location,” Francica said. “No voter should ever be turned away.”
If you can't wait, get a provisional ballot
If a voter doesn’t have time to wait as workers resolve a problem, they should ask for a provisional ballot to fill out, or paper ballots that are counted after the polls close, Schepisi said.
Voters with concerns can call the election protection hotline run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) or the Division of Elections at 1-877-NJ-VOTER (1-877-658-6837).
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: North Jersey voters face minor ballot glitches Election Day
