Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure apologized to county voters Wednesday during a news conference as he promised to get an explanation about what went wrong with the new voting machines the county was using for the first time Tuesday.

A malfunction delayed results for more than 10 hours and has sparked concerns about the accuracy of the count, especially in some races where tallies on election night seemed improbable.

Most notably among them was in the county judicial race where Democrat Abe Kassis at one point showed zero votes with several voting districts reporting.

After the ballots were recounted manually, Kassis appears to be the victor of one of the two judicial seats; the other is going to John Morganelli.

Joining McClure at the news conference and also apologizing was Adam Carbullido, senior vice president of product development for Election Systems and Software, whose company sold and maintains the machines.

Despite the mea culpas, McClure said officials are confident that the unofficial results as presented early Wednesday will stand up to any challenge. The state and local Republican parties are considering whether to challenge the count because of the problems.

“We believe that this process was legal, fair and accurate; we believe this count will withstand any additional scrutiny requested,” McClure said. He said he expects the results to be certified during the official count which begins Friday.

Carbullido said the company is determined to find the cause of the problem, which seemed to be most prevalent where cross-filing candidates were involved.

“We will be working closely with the Department of State and the county over the coming days and possibly weeks to get to the bottom of it,” he said.

One local race where results were not known until dawn on Wednesday was for Region 1 of the Northampton Area School Board that includes Lehigh Township.

John Becker, who cross-filed, and Republican nominee Robert Mentzell claimed the two seats with 2,155 and 1,775 votes, respectively. Unsuccessful Democratic candidate Barbara Knoll had 1,204 votes.