If you’re casting a ballot in person in New Jersey today, it will not get counted by election officials until . . . next week.
New Jersey election officials won’t count ballots cast in person on Election Day until at least Nov. 10, a state official confirmed Monday.
The Board of Elections will count all mail-in ballots first and vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can arrive through Nov. 10 and be counted, officials said. New Jersey counties won’t have a complete list of all mail-in ballots until at least Nov. 10.
A little over 6 million New Jerseyans requested absentee ballots; 3.5 million returned them, as of Sunday. Last cycle, 3.87 million New Jersey voters cast ballots in the presidential election. If this year’s turnout will be at least equal to 2016, roughly 363,000 Garden State residents will show up today, cast ballots . . . and then not have their vote counted for a week. Depending upon turnout today, the “wait until next week” pile could have 400,000 or 500,000 votes.
We all expect Joe Biden to win New Jersey by a comfortable margin, and Cory Booker’s Senate race probably won’t be competitive, either. But the state has a handful of competitive House races. How confident can any news channel or organization be about declaring a winner when a couple hundred thousand votes won’t be counted until around Veteran’s Day?