There have been a LOT of questions from many of you – understandably so – regarding the Bergen County mail-in ballot “dump” that went down in the early morning hours of Wednesday November 3rd. Jack was ahead county-wide, a major accomplishment for a Republican (Christie didn’t carry Bergen in ’09). Then, in an instant, he was down and never recovered.
Newly re-elected State Senator Holly Schepisi (R-39) took to Facebook last week to explain what happened:
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“My office has been receiving inquiries about how and why the election results, particularly in Bergen County, changed dramatically late Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning. A lot of the confusion stems from people not being aware that many of the vote by mail ballots had not yet been counted as of the initial vote tallies. This year we had 1. Early voting, 2. Vote by mail ballots, 3. Machine votes and 4. Heavier provisional votes as a result of people not being aware that they couldn’t vote on a machine if they had previously received a vote by mail ballot and/or people having to vote provisionally because certain machines weren’t working properly on Tuesday.
Republicans in NJ traditionally have greater numbers of votes in machines and democrats have higher vote by mail totals. This is the primary reason many of the vote totals changed into the early hours of yesterday.
We are ensuring every vote legally cast is counted and that any glitches are investigated.”
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In other words…
Jack won the “Election Day” vote on the machines both statewide and inside Bergen, but the Democrats’ formidable mail-in ballot option once again – based upon the current county – appears to have once again put them over the top.
It’s a terrible process (click here to check out my post on the subject) and it creates the appearance of fraudulent activity. I also think it creates conditions whereby it’s EASIER to commit fraud, Save Jerseyans, but it doesn’t mean fraud actually happened. There’s no evidence of it at this time. The immediate focus in my opinion should be to change the rules so that ALL ballots must be in by 8:00 p.m. Election Night and ballots received PRIOR to Election Week should be counted and ready to be included with the machine totals when the polls close.
Republicans also need to get better at the VBM game – at least until they can eventually win enough seats to end this absurd system as we currently know it, but that’s a topic for another post.
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