New Jersey counties are preparing to begin early counting of vote-by-mail ballots, with even small counties already swamped with tens of thousands of paper ballots.
Cumberland County had received almost 30,000 ballots as of Friday, Cape May County had received 33,000 ballots and Atlantic County almost 70,000.
To help ensure results in a timely manner, Gov. Phil Murphy ordered that boards of election may begin counting ballots 10 days early this election, or Saturday, since they will be handling unprecedentedly large numbers of vote-by-mail ballots.
In previous elections, vote-by-mail ballots could only be opened and counted beginning on Election Day.
And while this year the ballots can be counted earlier, no preliminary totals are supposed to be made public or shared in any way, according to the governor’s order. It’s a criminal offense to release any counts earlier than 8 p.m. Nov. 3.
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Murphy said Friday that 2.27 million New Jerseyans had already returned their ballots.
“With 11 days to go until Nov. 3, New Jersey is one of only six states that have already exceeded 50% of 2016’s turnout,” Murphy said in a tweet. The 2016 election was the last presidential election year.
Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland counties have exceeded 50% of 2016 turnout.
In 2016, 119,416 votes were cast in Atlantic County in the general election, and as of Friday morning the Atlantic County Board of Elections had received 68,180 completed vote-by-mail ballots, of the almost 200,000 mailed to voters by the County Clerk’s Office, said Board of Elections Chairperson Lynn Caterson.
The board handled just 9,412 vote-by-mail ballots in 2016, according to state statistics.
In Cape May County, a total of 49,939 votes were cast in 2016, and as of Friday morning, the Cape May County Board of Elections had received 33,000 vote-by-mail ballots, said Democratic Registrar Michael Kennedy. About 72,000 ballots were mailed out by the county clerk.
Just 6,154 of the 2016 total were vote-by-mail ballots in Cape May County, according to the state.
In Cumberland County, a total of 55,064 ballots were cast in 2016, compared with 29,780 by Friday, according to Board of Elections Administrator Lizbeth Hernandez. Just 3,989 were vote-by-mail ballots in 2016.
Both Cape May County and Atlantic County boards of election planned to begin “zipping and stripping,” or opening ballot envelopes, on Saturday, and had planned to begin on Monday counting ballots using scanning machines.
The public can watch the process on Zoom starting at 8:30 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, and 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays until the election, via the Atlantic County Board of Elections website.
At all times, a quorum of the board — or at least three of four members — must be present either physically or via Zoom to oversee the process, as required by state rules.
“Our computers will be streaming the activities straight through so we can watch the processes in full,” Caterson said of the four Board of Elections members — two from each political party.
“I am still very angry about the quorum requirement,” Caterson said. “The added ability to do it by Zoom makes it doable, but I still think it is an unnecessary requirement.”
She said the unopened ballots will have already been touched by many people as they have checked voter registrations and signatures.
“We have trusted their ethics,” she said of the workers assigned to processing ballots. “There has been a Republican and a Democrat working together at all times. Why is it not just as safe (during counting)?”
Caterson said it would be reasonable to require one Republican and one Democrat observer to be there at all times, but not a quorum of the board, since most board members have full-time jobs.
“If this kind of thing is a continuing requirement, it is going to eliminate a lot of really good people from being commissioners,” Caterson said.
Kennedy did not have a party breakdown of the returned ballots for Cape May County.
Of the ballots returned in Atlantic County, 30,503 were from Democrats, 21,532 were from Republicans and 15,302 were from unaffiliated voters, Caterson said. The difference is a small number of ballots from Green and other alternative party members.
