Berkeley Leaders Want In-Person Voting

Photo by Jason Allentoff

  BERKELEY – At a recent Township Council meeting, Councilwoman Sophia Gingrich showed a primary ballot that had been delivered to a house in town for a woman who had died 20 years ago.

  It was issues like this that made the governing body pass a resolution urging the governor to allow in-person voting.

  During Gov. Phil Murphy’s Aug. 14 coronavirus press conference, he said the Nov. 3 election will be done “overwhelmingly” by mail.

  Fortunately, the resident who brought the ballot to Gingrich’s attention was honest, but she said the vote could have been fraudulently sent in.

  “Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you want it to be fair. The only way for it to be fair is in person,” she said. “There are many errors that are going to be made, and voting in person stops all that.”

  Lt. Col. Michael Tier, who was involved in the JROTC at Central Regional High School, was in the audience during the most recent Township Council meeting.

  He said that he has voted here for 40 years. He received a letter saying his vote in the primary election was not counted because his signature was questioned.

  “Probably, a lot of people got that letter,” he said. There are likely more people whose votes were uncounted.

  He wants to vote in person as well. If his signature had been questioned in person, he could show other forms of identification or in some way solve the problem immediately.

  Mayor Carmen Amato said he also received calls from residents who received ballots incorrectly.

  “Residents are fearful of fraud,” he said. “It undermines the public’s faith in the election.”

  The Ocean County Board of Elections is very competent, the mayor said. However, the primary election in July took them two weeks longer to count and it cost a lot more. The cost in time and money would be multiplied in a general election.

  As of press time, the plan for November is for every municipality in New Jersey to have at least one polling location open. Each county should have half of the polling places available. You can drop off your ballot to a poll worker.

  There will be more voting dropboxes available to the public this election season.

  Voting by mail will be the default. If you choose to vote in person, it will be with a provisional ballot. This means that a poll worker has to determine if you voted by mail as well, to make sure you didn’t vote twice.

  A system will be available on Sept. 4 allowing people to register to vote online, the governor said said.

  The primary election in July was a test to see how the state would do in November, Murphy said. It wound up with the second highest voter turnout in state history for primaries.

  There will be no sample ballots. The ballots you receive in the mail are the ones to use, he said. They should all be sent to you by Oct. 5.

  In order for your vote to count, it must be postmarked by Nov. 3, election day. It must be received no later than Nov. 10. If for some reason it did not get postmarked, it must be received by 8 p.m. on Nov. 5.

  “Making it easier to vote doesn’t favor one particular party, but it does favor Democracy,” he said.

  Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington had primarily vote-by-mail systems even before the pandemic.

  He said there have been ongoing issues with the United States Postal Service which has been “turned into a political football by those who don’t favor political access.”