Was paper thickness the cause of the Westchester County, New York, ballot scanner problems on election day, Nov. 3, 2026? No, that's not true: Westchester County election officials initially appeared to blame the problem of the voting machines not accepting ballots on the thickness of the paper early on Nov. 3, 2026. However, the New York State Board of Elections released a later statement, announcing that the issue really "resulted from an update to the county's election programming." At the time of writing, official press releases have said that the issue is being addressed and that every vote would be counted.
The initial statement from the Westchester County Board of Elections was reported by Tara Rosenblum, News 12 senior political and investigative reporter, with a post on her X account @tararosenblum (archived here). It read:
🚨 BREAKING: Westchester County election officials have confirmed the cause of widespread voting machine problems across the county this morning: paper ballots are too thick for the machines to accept.
This is what the message from the Westchester County Board of Elections looked like on Rosenblum's account on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @tararosenblum on X.)
The Westchester County Board of Elections issued two press releases on Nov. 3, 2026 as of publication time. The first one, which is similar to the message posted by Rosenblum, can be found here (archived here) and second one can be found here (archived here). At the time of publication, neither press release stated a reason for the paper ballots issue.
However, government websites for Irvington, New York (archived here) and Pleasantville, New York (archived here), posted a Westchester County Board of Elections news release, in which the county Board of Elections said the issue with the voting machines was due to the thickness of the paper. The presence of these news releases indicates that the first press release from the Westchester County Board of Elections may have been changed to take out the "thickness of paper ballots" phrase.
The New York Post (archived here) reported that previously, the Westchester County Board of Elections said the issues were due to paper thickness. Later, the New York State Board of Elections faulted machine programming:
The county Board of Elections initially said the paper 'thickness' was causing the machines to spit the votes back out, only to backtrack. The state BOE later chimed in and blamed the machine programming.
The New York State Board of Elections posted a message (archived here) about the issues in Westchester County. The first paragrah, which blames a programming update for issues with the voting machines and the ballots, is included below:
The issue affecting voting machines throughout Westchester County resulted from an update to the county's election programming that occurred after the initial preparation and testing of Election Day voting equipment. A change affecting a contest in one municipality required updated election programming, which was subsequently tested and deployed for early voting and for Election Day machines in that municipality. However, Election Day machines elsewhere in the county continued to use the original programming, and therefore could not recognize and accept the ballot being used for Election Day.
The post is embedded below:
New York State Board of Elections releases statement about Westchester County ballot scanning issues https://t.co/6vJTO98vCz
-- NY State Board of Elections (@NYSBOE) November 3, 2026
The New York State Board of Elections also issued a press release (archived here) that stated the cause was an update to the programming.
(Image source: New York Board of Elections website.)
Lead Stories reached out to Westchester County Board of Elections but did not receive comment directly on the claim. We will update this story with any relevant responses from the county.
