Chester County, Pennsylvania: Three Precincts Stay Open Until 8:30 p.m. After Machine Setup Delays

Three polling places in Chester County will stay open 30 minutes late on Tuesday night after voting machines were not ready when polls opened in the morning.

The Chester County Court of Common Pleas granted a petition to extend voting until 8:30 p.m. at three precincts, the county said in a notice on its official website. Votes cast after 8 p.m. at those three sites will be provisional ballots, which the county elections board reviews before deciding whether they can be counted.

The three precincts

The extension covers Precinct 201, Easttown 3, at the Easttown Township Library, 720 First Avenue in Berwyn. It also covers Precinct 210, Easttown 6, at St. John's Presbyterian Church, 217 Berkley Road in Devon. The third site is Precinct 244, East Goshen 2, at Goshen Baptist Church, 1451 West Chester Pike in West Chester.

Every other precinct in Chester County closes at 8 p.m. as scheduled. The ballot drop box at the Easttown Library and Information Center also closes at 8 p.m., the county said, even though voting inside the library runs later.

What went wrong in the morning

Machines at the three sites were not ready at the 7 a.m. opening, and voters faced delays of 15 to 30 minutes, CNN reported. All of the machines were working by 7:30 a.m.

County spokesperson Andrew Kreider said the extension will not delay the start of counting, and the county has already begun counting mail ballots, CNN reported.

Why the half hour matters

Pennsylvania polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. statewide, and voters who are in line at closing time can still vote. Mail ballots must reach the county election office by 8 p.m. to be counted, the USA Today Network reported in its Pennsylvania live coverage, which first reported the Chester County extension at 12:27 p.m. Eastern Time.

Chester County is a suburban county west of Philadelphia. It leans Democratic, and Kamala Harris carried it by more than 14 percentage points in 2024, CNN reported. Pennsylvania voters are deciding the governor's race, every state House seat and control of Congress on Tuesday, so a late close in three precincts is one more small delay on a night when close races may take hours to settle.

The Chester County problem was separate from the morning failures reported in other states on Tuesday. Scanners failed across Westchester County, New York, and ballot readers stopped working at some precincts in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. North Carolina extended voting at five precincts later in the day and held its first statewide results until 8:15 p.m.

What voters at the three sites should do

Voters assigned to the Easttown library, St. John's Presbyterian Church or Goshen Baptist Church can vote in person until 8:30 p.m. Anyone who arrives after 8 p.m. will be given a provisional ballot. Voters at every other Chester County precinct must be in line by 8 p.m.