NJ County Seeks Inquiry After Dominion Scanners Reject Votes

(Bloomberg) -- The official charged with certifying elections in Mercer County, New Jersey, has asked county Prosecutor Angelo Onofri’s office to investigate after as many as 600 Dominion Voting Systems Inc. machines failed to accept ballots on Tuesday.

Most Read from Bloomberg

“I absolutely reported it this morning for a complete and full investigation,” county clerk Paula Sollami Covello, who attests to results, said in an interview. “It could have been an error on the part of someone. It could have been intentional and criminal.”

The prosecutor’s office said it was looking into the issue.

“We are reviewing her concerns to determine what further action should be taken,” Casey DeBlasio, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor, said in an email.

Dominion said the problem wasn’t with its machines.

“The issue in Mercer County is a printing issue,” spokeswoman Claire Bischoff said in an email. “The Dominion tabulators functioned exactly as they should by rejecting incorrectly printed ballots.”

The company was working with the county and the ballots’ printer, Bischoff said.

Dominion was the subject of baseless charges of widespread election rigging in the 2020 presidential contest. It sued outlets including Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, as well as former President Donald Trump and his attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, for defamation for the claims.

Sollami Covello said she was confident that scanners at county offices would produce full and accurate results Wednesday for local and congressional races in a dozen towns, including the state capital of Trenton and the hometown of the Ivy League’s Princeton University.

(Adds Dominion’s comment starting in fifth paragraph)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.