New York Republicans have been in a bind throughout the 2026 midterm elections. During the campaign itself, their candidates were in the awkward predicament of needing to distance themselves from their own party's leader, President Donald Trump, because he is wildly unpopular in their state. Now reports indicate that voting machines are not working on Election Day — and a top Republican election official in the county in question is a no show.
"Westchester source tells me that a complicating factor in trying to solve the voting machine issue is the fact the local GOP elections commissioner, Douglas Colety, was a no-show for Election Day (no time off requested)," reported City and State NY's Rebecca C. Lewis on X on Tuesday. "His deputies have been running things."
In Westchester County, NY, voting machines inexplicably stopped working on Election Day. Despite these problems, voters were told that the polls would not be held open past the 9 PM deadline in the heavily Democratic county.
"Voting machines at polling sites in Westchester County, New York, are not accepting election ballots Tuesday due to a printing issue, according to the county executive," reported CBS News' Alexa Herrera and Nick Caloway on Tuesday. "The machines started experiencing problems when the polls opened at 6 a.m. "
Herrera and Caloway added, "County Executive Ken Jenkins said there was a printer problem with the ballots that made them unreadable to the machines. There is one scanner at every polling place used for voters who are impaired, which is now being reprogrammed to read and count the ballots, Jenkins said."
In lieu of voting with the machines, "in the morning, voters were instructed to stay in line and fill out a paper ballot that is placed in orange emergency ballot bags to be counted later."
The voting machines going out, and Colety being a no-show, are especially concerning because Trump has established his plans on rigging the midterm elections if he does not think he can win them. In June, a voting rights expert told AlterNet that Trump's request for information about voters from all the states falls into this category, as the Constitution explicitly dictates that the states control the elections.
“The administration has been trying to compel states to turn their voter rolls over to the federal government and to consolidate all of that in a mega database,” Susannah Goodman, Common Cause’s Policy Director in the Voting and Fair Representation Program, told AlterNet. “A number of states have refused to turn over their unredacted voter rolls with personal identifying information — Social Security numbers, driver's licenses, et cetera. Common Cause and our partners have intervened in, I think, 17 of those cases on behalf of voters.”
She added, “I don't believe there has been a single case... where, when the state has resisted and claimed they are not going to turn these voter rolls over, the court has dismissed the case or compelled the states to turn them over. The government has not had a compelling reason, and the states have won. So when states fight back, they win. We have been involved in that litigation. That is another huge power grab by the administration. It is also an illegal power grab, and when we have pushed back, we have won.”