June 6,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, According to the NJ Department of Homeland Security the election infrastructure subsector is complex and includes both physical and cyber assets, including voter registration databases, voting machines, and other systems to manage elections and report results, as well as storage facilities, polling places, and centralized vote tabulation locations.
In advance of the New Jersey primary on June 6, Erin Henry, Principal Planner in the Preparedness Bureau at NJOHSP, sat down with Michael Geraghty, State Chief Information Security Officer, and Robert Giles, Director of the State Division of Elections, to discuss New Jersey election systems security and efforts in New Jersey to keep these election assets secure and the voting process free from interference.
Although there are no specific or credible threats to election systems in New Jersey, the FBI confirmed cyber attacks on voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois in 2016.
New Jersey’s primary elections will be held on Tuesday, June 6, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Your polling location is listed on the front of your sample ballot, which you will receive by mail prior to each election. Only registered voters are issued a sample ballot.
Primary elections, held in New Jersey each June, are the only elections where party affiliation affects the candidates for which someone can vote. In all other elections, a voter’s party affiliation is not even listed in the poll book.
New Jersey has “closed” primaries. This means that only Republican voters can nominate Republican candidates, and only Democratic voters can nominate Democratic candidates. Voters registered with any of the other political groups recognized by the State of New Jersey (Libertarian, Green Party, etc.) cannot vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary.
Unlike some other states with closed primaries, voters in New Jersey who are unaffiliated with any political party or group can declare either Republican or Democrat at the polls on the day of the primary and vote in that party’s primary.
