EASTON, Pa. (WLVT) - While Democrats and Republicans battled for power on Election Day, they were on the same page Wednesday about one thing: making sure every vote gets counted.
"I think there are reasons to have concerns about these machines," said Matthew Munsey, chairman of the Northampton County Democratic Committee.
"Our concern here, of course, is that the voters have been disenfranchised," added Rebecca Warren, Election Day counsel for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.
The county's voting machines caused headaches for voters and elections officials.
County executive Lamont McClure described it is as "a three-alarm raging fire that they were trying to figure out how to answer." He said several precincts reported issues, and all precincts had an issue with the judicial races.
"Some reports of difficulty voting in a retention election," McClure explained. "I have heard of some difficulty of hypersensitivity of the screens."
The issues prompted the county to recount the votes by hand, relying on the machine's paper ballots. The process wrapped up around 5 a.m. Wednesday as candidates, their attorneys and others watched what they described to PBS39 as "chaos."
"Additional scanners were wheeled in in the middle of the night from Philadelphia and other jurisdictions just to get through them fast enough," Munsey said.
"We believe that this process was legal, fair and accurate," McClure said. "We believe this count will withstand any additional scrutiny requested."
It's the first time the county has used the voting machines, which cost a total of $2.8 million. They’re from a company called Election Systems & Software (ES&S) based in Omaha, Nebraska.
Adam Carbullido, the company's senior vice president of product development, said ES&S is investigating the root cause of the issues.
"We have a responsibility to help ensure smooth elections are run here, and that didn’t happen [Tuesday]," he said. "So, we are committed to resolving these issues and making sure that none of these issues surface ever again."
County Republicans filed an injunction in light of the issues.
"We are asking that all of the voting machines along with the election materials in the ballots be impounded in order to ensure their safety and security until it can be determined exactly how this whole process is going to unfold," Warren explained.
A Northampton County judge granted the injunction, though the machines were already going to be impounded as part of election code, according to county assistant solicitor Richard Santee. McClure said he doesn’t expect any challenges from candidates about the results, but he said what happened Tuesday was unacceptable.
"There is no excuse for this failure," he said. "ES&S needs to diagnose the problem, fix it and ensure this never happens in the future."
The next time voters head to the polls will be April 28, 2020 for the Pennsylvania primary.