Ballot scanners were not working Tuesday morning across Mercer County, New Jersey, according to New Jersey 101.5, forcing voters to fill out paper ballots to be counted manually.
While voters will still be able to cast their ballot once it is filled out, it cannot be scanned once it is fed into the tabulator used to count votes. Voters will instead drop them into a slot at the top of the machine, Mercer County spokeswoman Julie Willmot told the news outlet.
"We are asking poll workers to use the official ballots because they can still vote them manually, and place them in the slot in the scanning machines and we will count them manually," Willmot said. "We have Dominion and other IT professionals coming down to fix the problem. No voter should walk away."
She added that provisional ballots are stored in the County Clerk's Office safe and that poll workers are trained to call for more if they need them.
Hamilton Township voters, and a county voting source, were told the wrong ink was used to print the ballots and could not be read by the scanner, according to 101.5.
According to the Mercer County website, the County Clerk's office is responsible for designing and printing all election ballots, while the superintendent of elections — who is appointed by the governor — acts as the custodian for the county's voting machines.
The phone rang unanswered at the clerk's office.
Lines formed at many polling places throughout the county as the problem was discovered and poll workers tried to determine what was happening.
Incumbent Democrat Andy Kim is facing Republican challenger Bob Healey in the newly redrawn 3rd Congressional District.
According to WHYY, the district still includes nearly all of Burlington County but was redrawn to include parts of Mercer and Monmouth counties. Ocean County was reallocated between the 2nd and 4th Districts.
Statewide the polls opened at 6 a.m. Tuesday morning and close at 8 p.m.
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