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This story has been updated to include comments from Doug Colety, Republican Party chair, and Tajian Jones, executive assistant to the county elections commissioner.
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. The Westchester Board of Elections said Wednesday that all voting machines and paper ballots across the county have been impounded.
Edward Borrelli, a Republican, and Paul Marks, a Democrat, who are competing for a New York State Supreme Court justice position, both filed court orders for the materials to be locked down.
The board of elections said official election results won't be available before the end of November because the county now has to count affidavits and absentee ballots that normally would be processed on election night.
Wednesday morning's unofficial totals had Robert DiBella taking 50 percent of the nearly 200,000 votes cast to choose two judges from the field of three. Marx pulled 27 percent of the vote and had nearly 9,000 more votes than Borrelli, according to the unofficial totals.
None of the judge candidates returned phone calls for comment Wednesday.
Westchester Republican Party Chairman Doug Colety said he expects more lawsuits and challenges in the coming days. "What may happen, the countywide one may go away Monday, it may not, another one may appear specific to a county legislature district, another may appear specific to a town board race," he said.
When a filing occurs, Colety said, everything grinds to a halt. "A candidate will go to court requesting the board of elections refrain from continuing the process of certification of an election, he said. The process of cert would mean counting votes, which encompasses the opening of the voting machines, running reports that generate official, opening absentee and emergency ballots, and affidavit ballots, and then going on to calculate and actually determining the outcome and certify it.
Colety said a lawsuit stops this process and requests judicial intervention. The judge can set a timetable, the judge directs the board when to open, when to not. Any rulings of the election commissioner on absentee ballots are subject to the judge, who has the option of overriding the commissioner's decisions, Colety said. Candidates have the right to object to ballots. It provides them with rights and protections."
According to Tajian Jones, executive assistant to the county elections commissioner, there were complaints about voting problems across the county. Complaints, she said, included paper jams and machines shutting down.
"There were issues," she said. "There are in every election."
Colety said those issues are part of why impounds happen. If there were broken machines, votes may exist on the plan B machine, which, when we remove the memory cards from that machine as well, those votes will be assigned to their respective election districts. Anything that was reported last night and was on our website is going to be overwritten with the results when we take it out of the machines from all locations."
Colety said he expects issues regarding the machines to be cleared up by Thursday morning, but anything on paper is another story. "All the paper is under impoundment order, absentee ballots, affidavit, emergency, and nothing will be touched until we go into court on Monday."
Reporter Alex Birsh contributed to this report.
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