Wilson voters are still looking for answers after Election Day at Gardner Elementary School off Highway 42 got off to a rocky start.

The North Carolina Board of Elections said poll workers were not able to print voter authorization forms between 6:40 a.m. - 8:07 a.m. Tuesday.

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Some voters waited in line for hours while others left the polling location entirely.

"People were getting frustrated and a little mad,” said Luis Ramirez with Casa Azul, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization encouraging Latino voter turnout. “You did see people leave, people go get their chairs or their umbrella, so they could sit down. Some people even got others to hold their place in line."

Tina Harrell was on her way to vote when a friend told her about the long wait time and advised her to wait until later in the day.

Harrell later returned in the evening, frustrated by what happened in the morning.

'Something this important for everyone in the United States, there should be more things in place to make sure everything is a go before you open the polls," she said.

The state Board of Elections voted during a 3:30 p.m. call Tuesday to extend voting at the Wilson site by 30 minutes to allow impacted voters extra time to return to cast their ballots.

The board had the option of extending for a longer length of time equal to the period of that morning’s delay, but opted for a shorter 30-minute window.

Harrell said that wasn’t the right call.

"What about the people that had to go to work that can’t come out later and vote?" she said. “What about those people? Their votes are now discarded. I don’t think that’s fair."

Election officials said protocol states poll workers should’ve switched to a manual backup option to allow for the voting process to continue after the printer failed.

North Carolina State Board Member Stacy Eggers IV questioned why poll workers didn’t get contact information for those who left the line to ensure they came back to vote.

Eggers also said this was the first election for Wilson County Board of Elections' new director Tasha Bell. Bell had previously served as the deputy director since 2011.

"Has that been addressed with county staff, so that this doesn’t happen again in any future election?" he questioned the rest of the board on the afternoon call.

"We’re unclear as to why that did not occur in this case but certainly, we will make very sure to have a lessons-learned session as we try to help her grow as a director," said North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson-Bell.

When asked where she believed the responsibility for the mishap lies, Bell told WRAL News, “The responsibility is for the workers.”

Bell said the workers should have checked the printers well before the first voter tried to cast a ballot.

"They are supposed to, when they get there at 5:30 a.m., turn on the DS200 and their printer at 5:30 a.m., so if there are any issues, they can give us a call and we can try to fix the issue," Bell said. "That didn’t happen. They didn’t boot their printers up until I think after 6 a.m."

Bell said she isn’t sure why poll workers didn’t switch to a backup option or get contact information for impacted voters stating the procedure was “talked about in the training.”

"They could have [written] their names down and telephone numbers and called them back," Bell said. "Or, they could have called our office and we could look up their name to find out what ballot style they get and they could’ve completed their ballot and they could’ve fed the ballot into the emergency bin."

Bell said she did not go to the Gardners Elementary School polling location herself during or after the mishap on Election Day because she was helping at another site.

While WRAL News was at the polling location Tuesday evening, a poll worker made an announcement around 7:40 p.m. that the polls there had closed at 7:30 p.m. Workers told WRAL News the information came from Bell.

WRAL News asked for Bell to be called again and Bell confirmed on the phone that the poll did not close until 8 p.m.

When asked about this on Wednesday, Bell told WRAL she never told the worker told the location closed at 7:30 p.m.

"No, I told her they were going to have to stay open later," Bell said. "When I called her, she said, 'I closed it on the outside. My DS200 is not closed yet.' I told her 'You can’t close it on the outside either.' She closed the door from my understanding."

Bell acknowledged the confusion that was caused and apologized saying, "I apologize the voters were turned away and it wasn’t handled better."

She again reiterated, "It was covered in the training, and we had a very extensive training."

Bell later shared an email the county received from a voter who expressed thanks for those who worked there that day.

"I want to express my gratitude to the poll workers at Gardners School today," the email read. "I cast my ballot for hopefully the first Black woman. I had tears in my eyes when I submitted my ballot."