RICHMOND (AP) — Some voters in Virginia Beach and Newport News experienced problems Tuesday with their electronic machines.
Rose Mansfield, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Elections, said there had been problems with 32 touchscreen voting machines that were preventing voters from casting accurate ballots.
The elections department issued a statement saying the broken machines were taken out of service immediately and there were enough working machines to prevent any voting delays.
Virginia voters are deciding races for U.S. Senate and the state’s 11 congressional seats.
In the Senate race, Democratic incumbent Mark Warner faces a challenge from Republican Ed Gillespie. Each candidate has depicted the other as an ultra-partisan Washington insider.
A popular former governor, Warner has led Gillespie in opinion polls throughout the race. But Gillespie, a former GOP operative and lobbyist, said he’s optimistic about his chances of pulling off a historic upset.
At Woolridge Elementary School in suburban Richmond, insurance salesman Bill Kinsey said he cast his vote for Gillespie. Kinsey said he thought Gillespie would be a better choice to improve the economy.
“I just felt that we needed a change,” he said Tuesday morning.
Nursing assistant Deborah Roberson said she picked Warner because she thought he would better protect Social Security. But she said she wasn’t enamored with either choice.
“To be honest with you, he’s probably the lesser of two evils,” she said.