TRENTON, NJ – Matt Platkin a member of Governor Phil Murphy’s inner circle and chief legal counsel said on Friday he and the state aware that mail-in ballots being filled out by voters and returned to their county clerks are indeed being returned and not delivered by the United States Postal Service.
Platkin confirmed this has happened in a number of counties, but did not give an exact count and the issue was the result of a design flaw in the ballot making process. The problem, Platkin said is ongoing and not resolved. Scanners are reading the sender’s address as the recipient and mailing it back to the homes of voters.
“There were a number of counties. The issue that’s happened, we worked with the US Postal Service to design the ballots so that their scanners would accurately read the return address,” Platkin said. “The scanners are picking up the sender’s, the voters address for some reason, so we’ve alerted the postal service of that on the call, as the Governor mentioned. Actually, that concern came out of conversations we’ve had with the various counties, so Mercer’s one, but there are several we’re aware of it and working on it.”
Platkin gave no time frame for the issues to be fixed with the election now less than two weeks from now.
Many people across the state either did not receive their ballots and many are receiving ballots for the wrong party in the upcoming primary election.
Early on in the process, our very own Joe Rullo was among the first to question the government’s ability to successfully hold a completely vote-by-mail election.
“New Jersey can’t even process people’s unemployment checks, how do you expect me to believe the state can handle counting millions of vote-by-mail ballots?”
A mail carrier truck fire this week also damaged an undetermined amount of ballots according to election officials who are still unable to determine whose ballots were destroyed in the fire.
Photo by Pope Moysuh on Unsplash
