Mail-in votes might cause huge problems on election day in New Jersey
I don’t want to get too crazy here, but it certainly appears New Jersey might be headed for our own little hanging chads-esque issue come election day Tuesday.
Dig this: In 2014, the last midterm election, there were about 143,000 New Jerseyans who were issued a vote by mail ballot.
In 2018, that number has mushroomed to over 553,000, according to the Constitutional Officers Association of New Jersey.
The problem? Last time around, up until this election, everyone who asked for a vote by mail ballot actually asked for it. This time? Well, if you voted by mail in the 2016 presidential election and didn’t opt out of the program, you got a ballot in the mail, thanks to a law passed this August. And if you’re anything like me, you don’t pay attention to the mail, and thus might end up being surprised when you head on over to your local polling station only to find you are not allowed to cast a vote.
“We mailed out 23,000 vote by mail ballots this year,” said Paula Sollami-Covello, the Mercer County clerk. “It’s a very big response.”
The problem, however, is only about 5,000 of those voters specifically asked for a ballot this election cycle (and about 7,000 were vote-by-mail previous to the law being passed). The rest? People who didn’t opt out.
Once the law was passed in August, Sollami-Covello, along with the other county clerks, scrambled to get letters out to voters, telling them if they wanted to opt out of the vote by mail process, now was the time. They had to do it writing. They had to alert the clerk’s office. There was no guidance from the state. It was confusing.
And of the 11,000 or so letters mailed by Sollami-Covello? “We got 869 people who asked to opt out,” she said.
Which means about 10,000 Mercer County voters are content with the vote by mail status, or 10,000 Mercer County voters are going to show up to vote and be told “sorry, Charlie.”
And if you are one of those people, if you show up to vote Tuesday and are told you’re a mail-in ballot person, you can and should ask for a provisional ballot.
“We’re printing extras this year,” Sollami-Covello said. “Every district is prepared but we’re also expecting a lot of upset people. But don’t let yourself get turned away. Ask for the provisional ballot.”
So what does this all add up to? Well, hopefully nothing. Hopefully would-be mail-in voters stayed on top of things and voted by mail. But realistically, it would appear there’s going to be a ton of provisional ballots that will need to be counted, a ton of provisional ballots what will need to be double-checked against mailin ballots to make sure no one voted twice, and a ton of voters who end up not very happy.
This also means there’s a very real possibility close races, both in Mercer County and statewide, won’t be called Tuesday night. Consider: In 2014, the last midterm, there were 82,615 votes cast in Mercer County, and only 5,211 were mail-in ballots. And we know every single one of those 5,211 asked for the mail-in ballot.
Again, this year, over 23,000 mail-in ballots were sent out, and the vast majority of those folks did not specifically ask to have them. It was just sent to them along with the weekly ShopRite circular and Clipper magazine. You have to figure there’s going to be hundreds, if not thousands, of would-be mail-in voters showing up at the polls and casting provisional ballots on Tuesday. These take time to count. Election night celebrations may be replaced with election night questions.
From local school board elections to the United States Senate race, we may wake up Wednesday morning not knowing who won. In fact, it’s not so far-fetched to imagine a scenario in which the balance of power in D.C. rests with the counting of these provisional ballots.
Someone prepare a bed for Anderson Cooper. Things might get wacky around here.