Posted on 11/03/2020 5:16:34 AM PST by tired&retired
An attorney who is a close friend in New Jersey just called me. He has voted in the same location in Monmouth County for 32 years.
They are requiring ALL persons who show up to vote to complete provisional ballots, telling them to leave many boxes blank.
He called the county elections office and was told that the NJ Governor issued a rule that ALL IN PERSON VOTING MUST FILL OUT PROVISIONAL BALLOTS. No using voting machines.
This takes much longer and is difficult for many people.
This has been known for months. Ballots were mailed. You do not need to put them in the mail for the post office to deliver. All you would have had to do is fill out your ballot and either bring it to the polling place or drop it in the municipal drop box which is picked up directly by the county. No Mail!
If you did not do this you will be given a provisional ballot which will not be counted unless votes are needed. It sucks but it is not fraud and should have been known by anyone paying attention.
Gee... isn't that against the law? /s
Voting for the Democrat is the default.
Oh my. I am taking a 92 year old lady to the polls today (her legs are bad and she doesn’t drive). I’ll have to warn her before she goes in to vote. She apparently threw out her mail in ballot because she wanted to do it in person. Since I’m down here taking care of my mother while she’s on hospice, I figured I could at least take this lady to the senior clubhouse where the voting happens today.
Did the state legislature provide him with this power? Is it reasonable or an infringement on the rights of voters including one man one vote?
As a NJ resident for about fifty years that is the truth. Thankfully I escaped about 8 years ago.
Perhaps she should have read it first. Now, she's going to cast a provisional ballot, which is almost certainly NOT going to be counted. These mandated changes certainly suck but they were not unclear. People need to stop letting emotion overtake reality.
You'd be better off taking her to her county board of elections, requesting a duplicate ballot from the clerk, and voting there and handing it right back to the clerk.
A provisional ballot is the merest shadow of an actual ballot. The law in New Jersey is such that the chances of any given provisional ballot ever being opened or counted is miniscule. It’s the electoral equivalent of patting little Johnny on the head and letting him think he’s part of the big boys’ football team when instead he’s thoroughly outranked by the waterboy’s second assistant.
Don’t mean to disappoint or discourage.
But see comment 28 before you go to the trouble.
OGINJ
I didn’t say the governor was legally entitled to do this—that’s up to the courts, and it smells bad to me.
In the short term, governors are dictators, subject to court restraint after the fact.
What bothers me about the post is that the governor appears to be making in person votes provisional. Is it to check against prior mail-ins to combat vote fraud? Doubtful in NJ. But, the part which got my attention was “instructing voters to leave parts of the ballot blank.”
What parts? WTF?
I have a feeling that a lot of little old ladies in these senior communities did the exact same thing. They threw it out because they want to vote in person like they have done in decades past. Murphy was probably counting on this.
Here in Ocean County, New Jersey (Toms River). Can confirm that the governor decreed only mail in ballots and on provisional ballots on election day (although you can bring your mail-in ballot to the polling station and they are supposed to accept it. There is also a drop-box arrangement (in my county at least) where there are locations, at county government buildings, with Fed-Ex type boxes, covered by CCTV cameras. I used that to enthustiastically cast our votes (me and the missus) for our great President Trump.
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