New voting machines were intended to make the voting process in New Jersey easier and more efficient.  However, with any new technology, there were bound to be a few problems and many voters who went to the polls early were frustrated when malfunctioning machines required them to fill out provisional ballots.

Reports of difficulties with the new machines were coming in throughout the northern part of New Jersey.

On September 23, Passaic County Superintendent of Elections Shona Mack-Pollock had released a clear, informative, and concise instructional video on YouTube to demonstrate how voters would use the new machines.  As of Election Day, unfortunately, it only had 3,119 views.  In Hawthorne, Passaic County’s local battleground where a mayoral and council-at-large election is taking place, a source said one of the polling locations—an elementary school—was particularly problematic.  “Some people were leaving,” the source said, reporting that when one machine was repaired by technicians, it seemed another came offline.

An older man and his wife who had cast their votes left the school astonished.  “I’ve voted this way for twenty-five years, never had a problem before,” the gentleman said.  “It’s unsettling.”

By the late morning, the technical problems appeared to have been resolved, but the damage had been done and the ‘learning curve’ was still apparent.  Poll site confusion and aggravation eventually led to the town issuing a text message alert at 1 p.m., urging residents to be patient with the poll workers.

The 2021 election is as much the story of the candidates and their campaigns as the poll workers and staff who carry out the actual process of the election itself.  With the pandemic requiring vote-by-mail ballots in New Jersey last year, residents across the state had their normal voting process disrupted, and to effectively communicate a new means of voting to everyone was no simple task.  The process changed once again this year, where early voting was made available from October 23 – October 30 along with the usual vote-by-mail ballots and in-person voting.  This, however, requires an even greater effort on the part of election workers.

In early October, Senator Holly Schepisi told Insider NJ, “I think there’s a lot of confusion even amongst people who are very educated as to when and how you vote. I fully support early voting for a couple of days prior to an election, but I think that opening up and voting in October for the election is an unfair hit on all of our counties, particularly because the funding of it is going to be passed down to the taxpayers of those counties. In my daily conversations with the Board of Elections, it’s put a significant strain on an already taxed group of human beings who had to process all the vote by mail applications for the last cycle.”

On Election Day, Insider NJ spoke with Schepisi again, this time about voter confusion and the problems presented by machine malfunctions in Bergen and Passaic County.  “It’s unfortunate that we had this morning significant issues in various counties with respect to everything from Wi-Fi not working to have heard firsthand from the Board of Elections, that there were areas in which styluses weren’t presented, and people waited online for an hour and a half to be able to vote and have the system not working.”

Schepisi noted that there was also confusion among elderly poll workers who had to issue provisional ballots when the machines were not working properly.

“Early on,” Schepisi said, “I posted on Facebook that nobody should be denied their right to vote, and if they were in the situation where there were technical difficulties, to insist on a provisional ballot to ensure that their vote counts. I think that there was the combination of people not being properly trained, all of the new machines, and not ensuring you have capacity for Wi-Fi in some of these elections. If it’s a close race, it’s going to cause concerns and questions that should have been sorted out well in advance.”

Schepisi said that her primary goal for the day was to make sure everyone who cast a vote would have it properly accounted for.  “We have got to fix this.”

The state senator highlighted confusion some voters had had with their mail-in ballots, where some voters in Bergen County received a sample ballot in the mail, filled that out, and mailed it in, thinking it was their vote-by-mail ballot.  “I know that the Bergen County Board of Elections was working with the AG’s office to figure out how to notify people that they had improperly cast a ballot so that they would be afforded an opportunity to cast a real ballot. So, I think there were too many changes at once, and too many changes legislatively at once, which confused more people than it should have.”

For those candidates who are running in particularly competitive contests, Schepisi said, “I think people are going have to hold tight.  For those really close races, they’re going have to be scrutinized to really ensure their integrity.”

Unofficial results from the respective counties are expected sometime this evening, but New Jerseyans should not be surprised if certified results take longer than usual as a result of this year’s challenges.