Virginia: Virginia Beach congressional primary election sees technical issue with electronic pollbooks | 13newsnow
On Tuesday morning, as Virginia Beach residents headed to local polling locations to vote for congressional primary candidates, some were met with paper provisional ballots instead of the option to vote on a computer. The City of Virginia Beach wanted voters to know it’s not the voting computers that are the problem — it’s poll workers’ check-in computers, called electronic pollbooks. Donna Patterson, the city’s Voter Registrar, said offering paper provisional ballots was a “normal emergency plan.” By 2:30 p.m., all electronic pollbooks at the 91 active precincts were working properly again, Patterson said. The provisional ballots will be counted, Patterson said, but not today. Virginia Beach’s anticipated final voting results will be counted Wednesday, instead of Tuesday night. Virginia Beach spokeswoman Julie Hill said the Registrar’s Office is investigating why this happened and why the issue wasn’t caught ahead of the elections and will release a report with more details.