Gloucester elections are a mess, and the judge isn't sure what to do
The next steps after a small-town South Jersey council candidate was kicked off the Democratic primary ballot after voting had already begun have a Superior Court judge and election lawyers struggling to sort out what happens next.
What Judge Benjamin Telsey learned today from Gloucester County election officials is that the ripple effect of disqualifying Paulsboro Councilman Eric Singleton’s nominating petitions last week is complicated and disrupts the counting of votes countywide.
The attorney for Councilman Tahje Thomas, who filed the initial challenge to Singleton’s petition, and he and Michael Maley, the attorney for Paulsboro Borough Clerk Elsie Tedeski, had agreed that any vote-by-mail ballots cast for Singleton would be counted as write-in votes, and that the voting machines would be fixed in time for the June 2 primary – or more imminently, the start of in-person early voting on May 26.
Invalidating roughly 317 Democratic primary ballots that have already been mailed and sending out new ones is impracticable, according to Gloucester County Counsel Eric Campo. He said the time required for the clerk to redesign ballots, for the election machine vendor, ES&S, to reprogram the machines, and for the printer to reprint and address the ballots would be about one week. Campos estimated that it would take another 5-7 days for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the ballots to Paulsboro.
https://newjerseyglobe.com/local/gloucester-elections-are-a-mess-and-the-judge-isnt-sure-what-to-do/