Spider Delays Vote Count In Rehoboth

It wasn't hanging chads or voter fraud that delayed the vote count in one Massachusetts town — it was a spider.

Rehoboth Town Clerk Kathleen Conti says one of the town's aging voting machines, which she's been pressing to have replaced for several years, malfunctioned Tuesday morning.

She called a technician, who said a spider web apparently prevented the machine's scanner from counting ballots. Conti says election workers stayed until 4 a.m. Wednesday to count nearly 500 ballots by hand.

"I can't say enough good things about them, but I don't have anything good to say about the spider," Conti said.

Rehoboth voters favored Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney and incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, but went for Democratic U.S. House candidate Joseph Kennedy III.

With reporting by The Associated Press and the WBUR Newsroom.