Mar 13, 2018 1 min read

Two of the five machines were briefly down at a polling station in North Strabane Township this morning because one of the machines – which are plugged into each other in a “daisy chain” – was set to “off,” which also rendered the machine behind it without power.

Washington County Elections Director Larry Spahr said the machines were down “not long” during voting that began at 7 a.m. in the 18th Congressional District special election. His office learned about the problem and contacted the judge of elections at that station, which is at a fire hall on Route 19.

“We had to take them through the process to get power to the units, like turning a light switch off and on. But they didn’t understand it so we had to walk them through it,” Spahr said.

Spahr said all five machines there were working as of 9 a.m.