Group seeks data on N.J. voting
Rutgers clinic wants to know how ballots were handled in the chaos after Sandy hit.
A public-interest law group is asking questions about whether New Jersey election officials counted ballots properly as voting rules changed in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
The Constitutional Litigation Clinic at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark requested information Tuesday from election officials for the state and all 21 counties about how ballots were handled. The group wants to know details of procedures for processing applications and counting fax and e-mail ballots, and to see copies of the ballots.
With elections held just a week after Sandy hit, the state allowed displaced voters to cast provisional ballots at any polling place in the state or to vote by e-mail or fax.
The rapid changes, invented on the fly to expand access to voting, led to some confusion surrounding the Nov. 6 polling. Some county election offices could not keep up with requests for ballots.
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who is also the secretary of state and New Jersey's top election official, ultimately gave displaced voters who requested electronic ballots until three days after Election Day to cast them.
Penny Venetis, codirector of the Rutgers clinic, said about 75 local elections across the state were close enough that the special votes could make a difference in them.
Venetis said she wanted to make sure officials heeded the directive not to count those electronic ballots until voters also mailed in paper copies - something she said was important for the security of voting.
"We thought it was really critical to know what actually happened with all those ballots that we cast," she said, "and whether or not the state was going to follow the protocol that was announced."
She said the information she was gathering could be used by candidates who wanted to challenge results.
Local election officials say the provisional ballots cast by displaced residents - not just those who had to vacate their homes, but also workers who went elsewhere to help restore power and clean up after Sandy - were still being transferred from county to county as recently as Monday.
Tuesday was the deadline for counties to send the state final certified election results.
Ernest Landante, a spokesman for Guadagno, said the state did not expect to compile detailed data on the number of provisional and electronic votes until mid-December.