Computer Outage Interrupts Food-Stamp Benefits

WASHINGTON (AP) —

People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food-stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage.

Spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email that an emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring.

U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe said that the outage was not related to the government shutdown.

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