To all Hudson County residents who waited in line to vote, mailed in their ballots, or went to a drop box: congratulations, you did it.
Now comes the hard part.
It’s still too early to tell whether Tuesday night will bring decisive presidential election results or if it will lead to a long, drawn-out fight over battleground states and counties. But no matter what happens Tuesday, New Jersey’s election will not officially end for weeks, if not months.
Normally, New Jersey voters cast the majority of their ballots on the first Tuesday of November. But this year, because of the state’s shift to a mostly vote-by-mail election due to the coronavirus pandemic, ballots have trickled in over a period of weeks.
In Hudson County, elections officials have been processing those mail-in ballots since they first started to arrive. That consisted of removing ballots from envelopes and preparing them to be fed through scanning machines, but not tallying them.
County officials then began counting those votes Oct. 26, though results are kept under wraps until 8 p.m. on election night.
As of 2 p.m. Tuesday, Hudson County voters cast 183,369 ballots (not counting provisional ballots cast in person) for a roughly 48% turnout. But that number will increase as counting continues. Officials expected to receive around 200,000 ballots before the end of Tuesday, and under new election rules, county officials will accept mail-in ballots until 8 p.m. on Nov. 10, provided they are postmarked on or before election day.
It’s unknown how many ballots will arrive after the election, but election workers cannot begin counting provisional ballots cast at polling places until all mail-in ballots have been counted.
“A poll worker in a polling place has no way of knowing if someone’s returned their vote by mail,” said Michael Harper, the county board of elections clerk. “The provisionals — what we do when we get them back is vet them, to make sure, one, it’s a registered voter, and two, they haven’t voted in any other way. So you don’t get a second vote.”
Once all mail-in ballots are received, elections officials will begin checking provisional ballots against already-counted mail-in votes to avoid anyone voting twice.
“So you’re looking at about two weeks till final numbers, I would say, at the least,” Harper said.
The tallying should be wrap up by late November. Candidates looking for a recount must petition a Hudson County superior court judge by Nov. 20; Nov. 23 is the deadline for county officials to submit election results to the secretary of state.
On Dec. 8, two weeks after the secretary of state receives election results, the state board of canvassers — consisting of Gov. Murphy and two legislators from each party — will meet to certify those results.
A week later, on Dec. 14, members of the U.S. Electoral College will meet in their respective states to cast electoral votes for president. Records of those votes must be submitted to federal officials by Dec. 23. Congress meets Jan. 6 to count electoral votes and declare results, and the president — old or new — is inaugurated Jan. 20.
And in four years, we get to do it all over again.
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November 04, 2020 at 04:25AM
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