ATLANTIC CITY, NJ – New Jersey Senator Michael Testa, a Republican, today declared the vote-by-mail election held last week has been plagued with fraud, failure and it is broken. This comes as his party’s own U.S. Senate election race hangs in the balance as hundreds of thousands of ballots remain uncounted and many ballots are not being counted.
In response to various vote-by-mail issues during this year’s primary election, Testa emphasized the need to ensure New Jerseyans are allowed to vote in-person at their local polling places in November’s general election.
“The many failures of New Jersey’s vote-by-mail scheme, including voter fraud and errors in counting ballots, are on full display and must not be repeated,” said Testa. “Our upcoming general election is too important to entrust to a broken vote-by-mail system. Ensuring that future elections are held in-person will restore New Jersey’s election integrity and voter confidence in our democracy.”
As a result of Governor Phil Murphy’s executive orders, residents were restricted from voting in person in New Jersey’s primary election with few exceptions. Testa had called upon the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey to monitor this election to prevent voter fraud and ballot tampering.
That help never came.
He, Assemblyman Antwan McClellan, and Assemblyman Erik Simonsen outlined the recent and numerous cases of voter fraud in New Jersey.
“The recent revelations of alleged voter fraud in several cities in New Jersey spurred us to call on the federal government to protect the sanctity of voter choice in our upcoming elections, which will be dominated by mail-in ballots,” said McClellan. “Every voter counts and their vote should be counted, too.”
“Our aim is to get the full Legislature to say, with one bi-partisan voice, that we will not allow voter fraud to disenfranchise voters in any city, township or borough in our state,” said Simonsen. “Voter fraud should be condemned across the aisle. We hope our colleagues will endorse this resolution and stand with us for fair elections.”
In Atlantic County, more than a thousand mail-in ballots cast in the recent primary were misread and must be recounted according to news reports.
New Jersey’s primary election – historically held in early June – was pushed back to July 7, the same date that Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) agencies opened for the first time in months.
“It was hypocritical for the governor to force people to wait in long lines outside crowded MVC agencies while simultaneously saying it was too dangerous to let them quickly cast a vote at a local polling center,” added Testa. “We continue to see story after story detailing how New Jersey’s flawed vote-by-mail process continues to be wrought with errors. There’s absolutely zero excuse to not let voters cast their ballots in-person through the proven process that everybody trusts.”
Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash