photo by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, residents whose votes are tentatively rejected due to inconsistent or missing signatures in the upcoming July 7 primary will get the opportunity to fix their ballots after an agreement was reached Tuesday in a federal lawsuit.
In Ridgewood over 700 ballots were rejected in connection with the May 12, 2020 Board of Education, Board of Education Budget, and Village Council General Election. They were rejected for many reasons including mismatched signatures .
In the past election officials have verified each vote by comparing signatures on a ballot with the corresponding signature on a resident’s initial application .
Under an agreement reached Wednesday, county boards of elections will have to send “cure letters” to voters within 24 hours after the decision has been made to temporarily reject their ballots.
The “cure letters” will tell voters they can fix any signature impairment on their ballots by completing a form and returning it to their respective Board of Elections in person, by fax, or email by 2 p.m. on July 23. If the form is mailed, it must be received – not postmarked – by the board of elections by the close of business on July 23.
Voters won’t be required to submit a copy of an identification document. A cure form will confirm the voter’s identity by having them provide either their driver license number, non-driver identification number or the last four digits of their social security number.
If a voter has none of those, they can attach a legible copy of either a state-accepted form of ID, an official federal, state, county, or municipal document which lists the voter’s name and address, a telephone bill, or tax or rent receipt. The address on a state-accepted identification document does not need to match the voter registration address, the agreement says.
Each county board of elections will have to report its progress on counting ballots to the New Jersey Division of Election by July 15. As they say “what could possibly go wrong with that ?” , sounds like a record keeping nightmare and saying the logistics seem a bit error prone is an understatement.
Translation:
NJ will allow voters too stupid to properly fill out a vote by mail ballot to have a say in how the state is run and by whom.
“Fixing” ballots after an election deadline is a recipe for disaster.
The point of an election is to confer power to someone voted for by a plurality of the electorate — the candidate with the most votes. An equally important point is to convince the supporters of the loser that the winner deserved to win — that the count was fair and unbiased.
So let’s think about what will happen when candidate “A” wins over “B” by, say, 1000 votes and 2000 votes are “tentatively rejected”. Sixteen days later (plus a few more days to validate the new signatures), Candidate “B” is declared the winner by 300 votes. Will the supporters of “A” accept the result? If “A” is Trump and “B” Biden or vice versa, you can rest assured that the loser will loudly scream “FIX!!” and we’ll have only turmoil if we’re lucky. New Jersey is a one party state, but if this kind of thing is going on in several swing states, it will be disastrous for our country and will destroy any governing mandate. This is the hanging chads problem on steroids.
Further, as we already know, the name of the voters who cast the tentatively rejected ballots will be available to OPRA requests. It won’t take long for political operatives to apply pressure to those who live in Democratic or Republican strongholds. Visits from canvassers to these voters will be noted and will cast doubt on the fairness of the result.
This fix might cheer up individual voters who couldn’t be bothered to vote in person or get their signature right, but it’s very bad for the rest of us.
Warm up for an historic US 2020 presidential election .
Incumbent likely to Go to retirement
at Mara Logo kicking and screaming
Into a constitutional crisis .
Gun people loading up for the crisis
Hope not