Voters needed to use paper ballots in the first hour of voting here this morning after an error by poll workers shut down some electronic voting machines, the Burlington County Elections Superintendent said.

Delays caused by voting-machine breakdowns on Tuesday could unduly burden citizens and deprive them of their right to vote, Chief Judge Harvey Bartle III ruled.
"The evidence, not surprisingly, demonstrated that DRE [direct-recording electronic] voting machines, like all other machines, sometimes fail. When that happens, time is of the essence," Bartle wrote in a 28-page ruling. "The polls are open for one day and one day only and then for only 13 hours. There is no rain date."

"Even in the best of circumstances, voters can expect and must tolerate more delay than usual on November 4," Judge Harvey Bartle III of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, wrote.

The top election official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortés, has directed poll workers to provide paper ballots to a precinct only when all of its touch-screen voting machines are broken.