Republican U.S. Senate primary candidate Hirsh Singh’s petition for a recount of the July 7 election was denied Tuesday in Atlantic and Cape May counties, with the judge saying the results were not close enough to cause concern and that Singh had not provided evidence of specific mistakes in counting.
Singh, an engineer from Linwood, said he will appeal.
Statewide, he is about 8,000 votes behind the leader, Rik Mehta, of Morris County, a biotech entrepreneur, pharmacist and attorney. According to the NJ Secretary of State, Mehta had a total of 154,817 to 146,133 for Singh. The victor will challenge U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., in the fall.
Singh had asked for a hand recount of all Republican ballots in Cape May and Atlantic counties, and filed similar petitions in New Jersey’s other counties.
Superior Court Judge Julio Mendez said in his Tuesday decisions that the Linwood resident “has failed to satisfy the most basic of requirements” for ordering a recount and “fails to establish a sufficient basis for his ‘reason to believe that an error has been made in counting the votes.’”
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Mendez heard both the Cape May and Atlantic county requests.
Singh said he has orders signed for a recount in Ocean County and is expecting finalized orders in Morris and Sussex counties.
“We are waiting to hear from a couple of counties and have more hearings tomorrow,” Singh said Tuesday. “Certain counties are not taking it seriously and have either not responded or delayed until the end of August. We need to get recounts started at least somewhere.”
Board of Elections Chairperson Lynn Caterson said, “I have read the judge’s well-reasoned decision denying the recount request, but I must note that whatever Judge Mendez had ruled, the Board of Elections would have complied with to the letter of his ruling, as we always do.”
The board counts all vote-by-mail ballots and provisional ballots, and handled a record-shattering 48,000 paper ballots in the primary.
Clerk of the Atlantic County Board of Elections Sue Sandman said at the Atlantic County hearing in late July that a hand recount of the 18,853 Republican ballots cast countywide would take at least a month and prevent the board from preparing for the November general election.
In his home county of Atlantic, Singh had an overwhelming lead. Of 18,853 Republican votes cast, Singh got 13,033 to Mehta’s 1,055. A total of 204 Republican were rejected in Atlantic County, according to election officials.
In Cape May County Singh also had an overwhelming lead, getting 7,979 votes to just 756 for Mehta.
In the hearing, Singh, 34, called the July 7 primary “irregular” because it was the first time a primary was conducted mainly through paper vote-by-mail ballots.
On Tuesday he said recounts are usually easy to get, and start with a machine recheck and then move to a recount if the candidate pursues it. When most votes are cast by machine, it is not as time-consuming to do a recount, and Singh said he feels he is being treated differently because a hand recount would be so time-consuming.
But in his decision, Mendez said the statute requires a candidate to show objective evidence of either errors made in counting the votes or show that election results were extremely close. Singh proved neither, Mendez said.
Singh said 27,000 ballots have been thrown out statewide, tens of thousands more remain uncounted and he has received reports of irregularities in how the optical scanners have counted paper ballots.
The primary election, ordered postponed from June 2 to July 7 by Gov. Phil Murphy to allow for a mostly vote-by-mail election to avoid spreading COVID-19, was certified statewide Aug. 9.
Singh ran in the 2nd Congressional District Republican primary in 2018 and was defeated by a modest margin by Seth Grossman. The seat ultimately went to Democrat Jeff Van Drew, who changed parties to Republican in December after voting against impeaching President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives.
He also ran unsuccessfully in the 2017 Republican primary for governor.
