Cambria County, Pennsylvania, Extended Voting Hours Due to Technical Issues?
Technical problems prevented the electronic scanning of ballots in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, necessitating an extension of voting hours on Election Day 2024.
Election officials were prepared for this possibility and announced the paper ballots would be retained under lock and key until the problem was resolved. Cambria County extended its voting hours until 10 p.m. (ET) to ameliorate any confusion or concern caused by the problem.
Early on Election Day 2024, reports of voting machines malfunctioning in Pennsylvania appeared on Facebook. Exaggerated claims based on these reports later spread on social media:
Local NBC affiliate WJAC confirmed the problems, which were limited to a single county, however. As that station later reported, the Cambria County Board of Election confirmed a software problem preventing the scanning of ballots:
The Cambria County Board of Election learned early this morning that a software malfunction in the County’s Electronic Voting System has prevented voters from scanning their ballots. This should not discourage voters from voting at their voting precincts. […]
There is a process in place for issues of this nature. All completed ballots will be accepted, secured, and counted by the Board of Elections. The County Board of Elections has express voting machine at precinct locations to continue to allow voting electronically, while still allowing hand ballots to be cast.
After sending a petition to a judge, the Cambria County Election Board later announced that voting hours in the county had been extended from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. as a result of the technical difficulties, as reported by WJAC:
In the petition, which was approved around 11 a.m. after hours of voter frustrations, election officials explained that a software malfunction to the Electronic Voting System (EVS) prevented voters from scanning their completed ballots.
“The malfunction caused voters confusions, long lines of voters, and many individuals left the polling locations without casting a ballot,” according to the petition.
While this kind of problem may delay a count of votes, it does not prevent people from voting or from having their vote counted. The ballots “will be going into lock boxes until they can be scanned, secured and counted,” WJAC reported.
Early reports suggested this problem extended to other counties. This specific issue only affected Cambria county, officials confirmed.
Officials later determined that a faulty printer was the cause of the problem:
The widespread voting issue that caused problems county-wide was caused by a printing problem with the ballots, in which the ballots could not be accepted by voting tabulators.The new ballots will solve the problem for the remainder of Election Day.
Officials want to reassure individuals who have already voted that their ballots are secured. In a statement, the Election Board reports that emergency protocols to safeguard election integrity have been taken, and that each vote will be secured and counted.
“For those individuals who have not voted, once again, the County Board of Elections encourages those individuals to vote at the polls,” the Election Board said in a statement. “Polls must, by court order, remain open until 10 p.m. We thank those poll workers, election officials and voters who have been patient and have been tirelessly devoted to rectifying this issue.”
As Snopes has covered in detail, delayed vote counts are not a sign of election fraud or disenfranchisement. Because technical difficulties delaying vote counting did, in fact, cause a voting extension in Cambria County, however, the claim is true.
