Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Ballot Readers Stop Working at Some Oklahoma County Precincts on Election Day, Votes Secured in Locked Bins

Ballot readers have stopped working at some polling precincts in Oklahoma County on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3, 2026. Voters in Oklahoma City and across the county ran into delays at some polling places because of the machine problems, and the Oklahoma County Election Board said it had received reports of problems at multiple polling locations.

Voting continues, and no voter is turned away

Election Board Secretary Doug Sanderson said voting never stops when the ballot reading machines are down, and voters are not turned away. "Every vote will be counted, so no one should be concerned," Sanderson said. Oklahoma County is the most populous county in the state, so a failure at several precincts affects a large share of the state's voters on a day when Oklahomans are deciding races for governor, Congress and other state and local offices in the midterm elections. Polls in Oklahoma are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3.

Long ballots can jam the machines

Sanderson said it is not uncommon for ballot reading machines to malfunction, particularly when voters are turning in long ballots that can get jammed in the machines. He said he did not know the full number of machines that had malfunctioned in the first hours of voting on Tuesday. One precinct that reported issues was Newalla Baptist Church in eastern Oklahoma County, where voters were handing in their paper ballots to poll workers instead of feeding them through a reader.

Locked bins hold the ballots until the count

Officials prepared for this kind of failure before Election Day. Technicians were stationed throughout the county to fix broken machines through the day, and each voting precinct was stocked with locked bins where paper ballots are placed if the tabulating machines are down. News9 reported the same procedure in the election board's own wording: affected ballots are being secured in locked emergency bins and will be counted on Tuesday as technicians work to resolve the problems. Ballots placed in the locked bins will be counted at the end of the day, when the precinct official feeds the ballots back through functioning machines.

A second county failure on the same morning

The Oklahoma County problem is a separate event from the ballot scanner failure in Westchester County, New York, which Orbit Post reported earlier on Tuesday. The two counties use different election offices and different procedures, and officials in each county described their own backup plan. In Oklahoma County, that plan is paper ballots in locked bins, technicians working across the county, and a count at the end of the day through machines that are working. Sanderson's message to voters was direct: keep voting, because every vote will be counted.