Q&A
Discussion of election day glitches in Queens polling sites
1:14:25
·
145 sec
Council Member Schulman inquires about the election day glitches that occurred at Queens polling sites, including those in her district. She asks Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the NYC Board of Elections, to explain what happened and what measures are being taken to prevent similar issues in the future.
- Schulman reports receiving numerous calls about glitches starting at 6:30 AM on election day
- Ryan acknowledges the issue and mentions that it was isolated to Queens
- The problem affected about 103 out of 298 or 299 poll sites in Queens
Lynn C. Schulman
1:14:25
I represent I represent Queen, Central Queen.
1:14:28
So, on election day, as I'm sure you're aware, there were a large number of, glitches in, at Queen's, sites, including ones in my district.
1:14:39
I mean, my phone started blowing up at 6:30 in the morning.
1:14:42
So what Out the
Michael Ryan
1:14:43
same time.
Lynn C. Schulman
1:14:44
A, what happened?
1:14:45
And b, what's being done to make sure that doesn't happen again?
Michael Ryan
1:14:48
So, we're still in the process of completing the, post election analysis with respect to that, and we're awaiting reports from 2 separate vendors, the, the election machine vendor and the ballot vendor.
1:15:03
I think I can confidently state, but I will not say it with a 100% certainty, that it was not a scanner issue, that it it is likely going to be a paper related issue.
1:15:16
And so what we were able to do was we were able to leverage our field teams of technicians, both board employees and, vendor employees, and and basically converge on Queen's.
1:15:31
It was the problem was isolated to Queen's, and what we were able to do was, the fix, the temporary fix on election day, which got us through the day, was to, have the reader on the machine stop trying to recognize the blank box on ballots where you would stamp it for affidavit.
1:15:55
Mhmm.
1:15:56
And once we did that, and that was identified fairly early, but then it had to be done.
1:16:00
Right.
1:16:00
Although it was limited to I say limited, not tongue in cheek.
1:16:04
It was there was 298 or 299 poll sites in Queens, and it was about a 103 sites that were affected.
1:16:11
Although it was only affecting a 100 sites, we made sure that we took that remedial action across the entire borough so that, if something, popped up later in the day, we wouldn't have we wouldn't have that problem.
1:16:24
So, yes, we put all our resources to it.
1:16:27
We got the problem solved, as quickly as we could.
1:16:30
I think that the hundred sites, 103 sites, were remedied about an hour and a half or 2 hours, and it took a few hours more to do the rest of the borough.
1:16:38
But but here's the reality.
1:16:41
We are supposed to get ballots for testing from, the print run that's going to be on Election Day.
Paul Seamus Ryan
1:16:50
Mhmm.
1:16:50
And
Michael Ryan
1:16:50
we went through all of that testing process, and nothing came up in the testing process as having a problem.
