Scanners Failed in 44 of 45 Westchester Towns. Lawler Conceded Before the Bags Were Done.

Ballot scanners rejected Election Day ballots in 44 of Westchester County’s 45 municipalities. Two days later, bipartisan teams were still feeding orange emergency bags through machines in Ardsley — and Mike Lawler had already conceded New York’s 17th Congressional District.

Rep. Mike Lawler, the Republican incumbent, told supporters Tuesday night that he had called Democrat Cait Conley. “When all of the votes are counted tomorrow in Westchester it’s going to be pretty clear we’re going to be short,” he said, per CBS New York. “I have never been afforded in any of my elections a concession on election night and I fundamentally believe it’s the right thing to do. And so I congratulate Cait on her win and wish her well as our next member of Congress.”

Conley told her crowd, “We did it,” and later, “We flipped New York-17,” ABC7 New York reported. On Wednesday Lawler posted a thank-you graphic to Hudson Valley voters for “the honor of serving as your Congressman for the past four years.”

What the state said broke

The New York State Board of Elections posted the cause Tuesday afternoon. A contest change in one municipality required updated election programming. That update was 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 ballots being used for Election Day,” the board wrote.

The board said the immediate fix was replacement media so at least one scanner at every poll site could read the ballots. Rejected ballots, it said, were not miscounted — the machines spit them out. “There are no identified concerns with the ballot paper or other physical characteristics that would affect its ability to be scanned,” the statement added. “Accuracy will never be sacrificed for speed.”

Westchester’s own first message that morning had named no programming cause. County government said only that an “issue involving paper ballots” was blocking machines and that completed ballots would go into “designated orange emergency ballot bags.” County Executive Ken Jenkins later called the day a “debacle” and promised a bipartisan review.

Lawler’s line on Election Day

At 7:23 a.m., before the state explanation, Lawler posted: “There is a problem with every ballot scanner in Westchester County.” He told voters to stay in line. By mid-morning he said his campaign was already in court to force a central count “so that our campaign, election monitors, and our attorneys can watch and oversee the process.”

NBC News and The Daily Wire both reported the failure hit 44 of the county’s 45 municipalities. Jenkins told The Daily Wire a barcode printing error was to blame — a different account from the state’s programming mismatch. Jenkins also said emergency ballots “on a normal basis” are few, and that this year there “may be a couple hundred thousand.”

The bags are still moving

ABC7 New York reported Wednesday that workers at a county facility in Ardsley were tabulating the bagged ballots on six machines under police escort, with both parties observing. Douglas Colety, the Republican commissioner of the Westchester Board of Elections, said the systems “are not on the internet and not hackable” and that “both parties oversee the entire election process from top to bottom.” Assemblyman Matt Slater, a Republican, called it “an unprecedented situation.”

On Thursday — two days after Election Day — News 12 Westchester reported the count was still underway with “no estimate for when the count will be completed.” County Legislator James Nolan said more than 12,000 votes still needed counting in his race alone. Police remained at the Board of Elections facility.

Decision Desk HQ’s race update at an estimated 85% reporting put Conley at 133,219 votes (52.2%) and Lawler at 121,881 (47.8%) — an 11,338-vote gap. Lawler did not wait for Westchester to finish the bags.

What to watch: when Westchester finishes the orange-bag canvass and posts certified totals; Jenkins’s promised bipartisan investigation into the programming failure; and whether any local races still hanging on those bags flip once Ardsley is done.