ATLANTIC CITY — The city’s change of government referendum has been postponed six weeks because of concerns of spreading the new coronavirus, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday.
The special election originally scheduled for March 31 will now take place May 12, but there will be no polling stations open for voters to cast their ballots. The election will be vote-by-mail only, according to the governor, and all return envelopes will have prepaid postage.
“My top priority is to keep New Jerseyans healthy and safe during this pandemic, and these new measures will ensure that all New Jersey voters are able to safely exercise their right to vote and be engaged in our democracy,” Murphy said.
Secretary of State Tahesha Way said, “the actions we are taking today protect our voters, election workers and election security,” before adding that conducting the election exclusively using vote-by-mail “will reduce the potential risk to health and safety while ensuring that every New Jersey voter has fair and free access to the ballot box.”
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It was unclear Thursday what the cost of having an exclusively vote-by-mail election would be or who would pay for it.
A political action committee called Atlantic City Residents for Good Government has proposed changing the city’s government from its current mayor-council form to a council-manager form. The PAC, chaired by casino labor president Bob McDevitt, circulated a petition that garnered more than 3,000 signatures from Atlantic City residents.
“We fully support and agree with Gov. Murphy’s decision to postpone the March 31 election in the interest of the health and safety of Atlantic City residents, and we are confident that this referendum will be enthusiastically approved by the voters,” McDevitt said in a statement Thursday. “We are also very happy to hear that the decision has been made to send every registered voter a mail-in ballot with prepaid postage, which allows for maximum participation in the democratic process.”
Mayor Marty Small Sr., one of the proposal’s most outspoken critics, said he knew it was a possibility the special election could be postponed as the situation with COVID-19 became clearer in New Jersey. Small said he was confident the referendum would be defeated, regardless of when it was held.
“We were prepared to beat them on March 31, now we’ll beat them on May 12,” he said. “The election could be today and we’d beat them.”
For the referendum results to be valid, at least 30% of the turnout in the last general election, or 1,870 people, must cast ballots in favor of the proposed change.
Prior to Murphy’s announcement Thursday, the Atlantic County Board of Elections had already received nearly 800 mail-in ballots from Atlantic City for the March 31 special election. An estimated 3,400 ballots had been mailed to Atlantic City registered voters. It was unclear Thursday how the board will handle those ballots already cast.
Election rules have been modified during prior emergencies, including by Gov. Thomas Kean in 1982 during a severe winter storm and by Gov. Chris Christie in 2012 in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. The changes under the executive order signed by Murphy for the upcoming elections are temporary.
