New Jersey's All-Mail Vote Debacle Is a Warning for November

Concerns began mounting before voting had even ended. Undeliverable ballots piled up in trash cans and apartment lobbies. Even though state law forbids anyone from collecting more than three ballots, roughly 800 ballots were found bundled together — 400 were stuffed into one mailbox, and 360 more were found in another in a completely different town. That evidence of illegal vote harvesting led officials to reject them all.

Another 1,214 votes were disqualified because the voters’ signatures did not match official records, and 1,000 more because the “bearer” — the person who collected and delivered the vote — didn’t properly report doing so. Voters reported never receiving ballots even though they are listed as having voted — in other words, someone else purportedly cast their vote.

Ultimately, nearly 20% of ballots cast on May 12 were invalidated. Paterson NAACP leader Rev. Kenneth Clayton summed it up best: “These kinds of acts make people not want to vote anymore.”

Unsurprisingly, the four people recently indicted face charges that they illegally possessed or tampered with ballots. Fresh accusations are coming to light that one of the defendant’s campaigns hired workers to churn out fraudulent votes in bulk.

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