New Jersey: State to allow voting by e-mail and fax | POLITICO.com

Using a system already accessible to military members deployed overseas, hurricane-damaged New Jersey will allow displaced residents to cast their votes using e-mail or fax on Election Day. “To help alleviate pressure on polling places, we encourage voters to either use electronic voting or the extended hours at county offices to cast their vote,” said Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno said in a statement. “Despite the widespread damage Hurricane Sandy has caused, New Jersey is committed to working through the enormous obstacles before us to hold an open and transparent election befitting our state and the resiliency of its citizens.”

New Jersey: Essex County NJ man convicted of absentee ballot fraud | Politicker NJ

An Essex County campaign worker was convicted today of absentee ballot fraud that occurred during the 2007 election of state Sen. Teresa Ruiz. John Fernandez, 61, of Belleville, was found guilty of election fraud following a two-week trial.  The jury found Fernandez guilty of charges of conspiracy (2nd degree), election fraud (2nd degree), absentee ballot fraud (3rd degree), tampering with public records or information (3rd degree), and forgery (4th degree). The Mercer County jury found that  Fernandez, who works for the Essex County Department of Economic Development, fraudulently tampered with documentation for absentee ballots in Ruiz’s Nov. 6, 2007 general election, submitting ballots on behalf of voters who never received the ballots or had an opportunity to cast their votes.

New Jersey: Democrats: New Jersey Voter ID Overhaul Unlikely | NBC 10

Some progressive Democrats want to make sure the state doesn’t follow the lead of six other states, including Pennsylvania, and enact strict new voter ID laws they say could lead to suppression at the polls. Democratic Assemblyman John McKeon, of Essex County, said Thursday the laws, requiring voters to present photo identification, are thinly veiled attempts to repress votes primarily from poor, Democratic constituencies. Such laws could hurt President Barack Obama’s re-election bid because they strike at his support base. “Twenty-one million Americans don’t have photo IDs, and two-thirds of that 21 million come from core Democratic constituencies,” McKeon said. “This shouldn’t be a partisan issue — we should be finding ways to get more people to exercise this precious right to vote, not suppressing it.”

New Jersey: Democrats Square Off Over Alleged Voter Caging Effort | TPM

New Jersey Democrats Reps. Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman — facing one another in a primary election after their districts were merged as a result of redistricting — exchanged heated accusations of dirty politics in the hours before voting got underway on Tuesday. Rothman’s team complained about possible irregularities and had a county elections superintendent impound 2,000 absentee ballots they found suspicious. Late Monday night a judge ruled that decision went too far and ordered the ballots be counted.

New Jersey: Mayor, son, arrested on charges they nuked recall website | Ars Technica

The mayor of a small New Jersey hamlet has been arrested, along with his son, on federal charges that they shut down a website advocating the mayor’s recall after breaking into the online accounts of political foes. According to federal officials, Felix Roque, the 55-year-old mayor of West New York, New Jersey, and his son, Joseph Roque, 22, were arrested early Thursday morning by FBI agents. In February, the pair planned and executed the silencing ofwww.recallroque.com by gaining unauthorized access to the GoDaddy account used to control the domain name. An FBI special agent filed documents with these allegations in a New Jersey federal court. The father-and-son team also obtained e-mails and messages sent among opponents after gaining unauthorized access to e-mail and Facebook accounts. “I have always treated you with respect and courtesy, but I have copies of everything sent to the website and communications with names,” Mayor Roque wrote in an e-mail to one of the opponents, whose identity had remained unknown to the Roques until they gained illegal access to the accounts. “Remember, I am in the Army with many friends.”

New Jersey: Bill to make recall efforts easier is proposed following Hamilton Mayor Bencivengo corruption charges | NJ.com

Legislation scheduled to be introduced today by Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo would make it easier to recall a mayor or other elected official, currently a long and formidable process. DeAngelo’s bill would allow residents to recall a mayor or any other elected official earlier in the official’s term than is currently allowed. More important, the bill would lower the number of petition signatures needed to force a special election that could boot an official from office. The assemblyman called current recall procedures “daunting” and said residents shouldn’t face nearly impossible hurdles to remove a politician they feel isn’t worthy of the job.

New Jersey: Hudson County elections chief vows to fix “egregious” errors that frustrated voters on Tuesday | NJ.com

The Hudson County Board of Elections will “absolutely” implement some changes to address “egregious” mistakes that were made during Tuesday’s school board election in Jersey City, an official said yesterday. Some Downtown voters said poll workers ordered them to distant polling places and were unhelpful to voters who wanted to vote with provisional ballots. In some cases, including at the Booker T. Washington public housing complex and a senior facility on Pacific Avenue, voters who live in buildings that contain polling places were told to go elsewhere to cast their ballots.

New Jersey: Machine glitch on Sequoia Advantage leads to election recount in Wallington | NorthJersey.com

There will be a recount in the Wallington Council election. Wallington council candidate Kevin O’Reilly petitioned the Superior Court of Bergen County for a recount after he ran for a seat on the council and lost by a margin of 21 votes to Councilman-Elect Roman Kruk. Kruk received 1,017 votes to O’Reilly’s 996.

O’Reilly petitioned the court on Nov. 28 for a recount due to a machine glitch that occurred in Wallington District Number Three. On the night of the election, one of the voting machines located at the Park Row Firehouse didn’t print out the voting results due to the machine breaking down. To make up for the broken machine, the votes were counted by hand and verbal consent. After hearing his case for the recount, the court ruled due to the mistake in the voting machine, a recount is in order that will take place on Dec. 8.

New Jersey: Result of Jersey City special election won’t be known for several days | NJ.com

Vote totals for Tuesday’s Jersey City special election have been stuck at 95.05 percent of precincts reporting since Tuesday night, and the complete count will stay unknown until at least Monday. Two voting-machine cartridges are still in the machines themselves, and they can’t be retrieved without a court order, Hudson County Clerk Barbara Netchert said yesterday.

Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson and her running mate, Rolando Lavarro, are the leading vote-getters, with third-place finisher Sue Mack about 250 votes behind Lavarro, counting mail-in ballots. Mack’s team is hoping the missing cartridges will lead to enough votes for her to overtake Lavarro.

New Jersey: Warren County officials not concerned about election machine malfunctions now totaling five | lehighvalleylive.com

Warren County officials plan to meet with representatives of their voting machine manufacturer this week after five of the machines malfunctioned during Tuesday’s general election. Three machines broke down in the Phillipsburg area in addition to one in Allamuchy Township and another in Independence Township.

“Little things like that happen in every election … in every county in every state in the country,” county Clerk Patricia J. Kolb said today. “It’s not unique to us.”
The malfunctions added fire to an already heated Phillipsburg mayoral race.
Unsuccessful candidate Todd Tersigni did not concede the election Tuesday night, citing concerns with the machines.

New Jersey: Phillipsburg man discovers voting machine error | lehighvalleylive.com

Richard Rumfield was the first person to cast his vote at 6 o’clock this morning at the town municipal building in Phillipsburg. But as he was about to submit his choices, he realized an error with the machine. Rather than choosing the names he checked on his straight ticket, the machine had compiled the names listed below his preferred candidates.

Rumfield alerted a poll worker, who noted the error and said they’d report the malfunctioning machine. By going back through each question, and answering opposite of what he had the first time, Rumfield was able to manually choose the candidates for whom he actually wanted to vote, but he said he still left the polling place unsatisfied.

New Jersey: Phillipsburg’s second malfunctioning voting machine taken out of service | lehighvalleylive.com

A second Phillipsburg polling machine has been taken out of service after malfunctioning, according to Warren County Board of Elections officials.
The machine was located in the Heckman House at 530 Heckman St.

“That one froze and was not responding to the voter,” Warren County Election Administrator William Duffy said, adding the machine had five votes on it when it froze. “The technician and poll worker could not get it working so it was replaced.”

New Jersey: South Jersey voting-machine incident makes waves | Philadelphia Inquirer

When the returns came in for the Cumberland County Democratic Committee last summer, Cynthia Zirkle couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Only 86 votes were cast in the race to represent her district in Fairfield Township, and despite assurances from dozens of friends, Zirkle and her husband, Ernest, had managed to win just 19 votes between them. “I can’t believe that’s correct,” Zirkle told her husband, a retired veterinarian and the town’s deputy mayor.

The couple sued the Cumberland County Board of Elections and discovered that due to a programming error, their results had been switched with those of their opponents. In a rare turn of events, a new election was ordered, which the Zirkles handily won.

The case caught the eye of a Rutgers law professor who has spent years arguing that the touch-screen voting machines in use across New Jersey are prone to malfunction and hacking and need a paper backup that would allow for manual recounts. Provided with that real-life example of the machines’ fallibility, Penny Venetis, codirector of the constitutional litigation clinic at Rutgers-Newark Law School, is fighting to get the state Appellate Court to reopen her 2004 lawsuit and rewrite the rules on how elections are conducted in New Jersey. “The issues involved extend way beyond Cumberland County,” Venetis said. “It’s only because it was such a small election we know about this. If it was Newark, forget it. But that’s our point, stuff like this happens. Computers can be told to do whatever you want. They can play Jeopardy!; they can cheat in elections.”

New Jersey: Bergen County clerk candidates clash over ballot printing costs | NorthJersey.com

The two candidates for Bergen County clerk sparred Tuesday over how much the county spends to print ballots. Democratic challenger John Hogan of Northvale contends the clerk’s office could trim about $200,000 from its printing bill by putting the work, which cost $2.4 million last year, up for a competitive bid.

GOP incumbent Elizabeth Randall of Westwood countered that election-related printing is a specialized line of work that only a few New Jersey companies do. That’s why the state Legislature exempted such work from competitive bidding, Randall said.

The candidates clashed on the printing issue twice this week, first at a forum sponsored by the Korean-American community in Fort Lee on Monday and again at a forum hosted Tuesday by the Bergen County League of Women voters at Bergen County Community College in Paramus.

After the League debate, Hogan called Randall’s argument “ridiculous.”

New Jersey: Zirkles win Fairfield election; state can’t confirm investigation | NJ.com

The county and the courts had already expressed it but the voters of Fairfield Township made it official — again. Democratic County Committee candidates Cindy and Ernie Zirkle were elected Tuesday over competitors Mark and Vivian Henry, according to unofficial online results from the county Board of Elections.

Mail-in ballots had not been recorded by 10:30 p.m. but the Zirkles took 33 percent of the vote over the Henrys’ 17 percent. “We don’t trust the system,” said Cindy Zirkle, so a substantial number of absentee ballots were distributed.

“It’s a shame,” Zirkle began late Tuesday night, that certain opposition parties “refused to accept the Board of Elections’ admission.” That admission being Board Director Lizbeth Hernandez stating she inadvertently mismatched the names on the ballots and the results declared in June were the exact opposite.

New Jersey: What happens when the printed ballot face doesn’t match the electronic ballot definition? | Freedom to Tinker

The Sequoia AVC Advantage is an old-technology direct-recording electronic voting machine. It doesn’t have a video display; the candidate names are printed on a large sheet of paper, and voters indicate their choices by pressing buttons that are underneath the paper. A “ballot definition” file in an electronic cartridge associates candidate names with the button positions.

Clearly, it had better be the case that the candidate names on the printed paper match the candidate names in the ballot-definition file in the cartridge! Otherwise, voters will press the button for (e.g.,) Cynthia Zirkle, but the computer will record a vote for Vivian Henry,as happened in a recent election in New Jersey.

How do we know that this is what happened? As I reported to the Court in Zirkle v. Henry, the AVC Advantage prints the names of candidates, and how many votes each received, on a Results Report printout on a roll of cash-register tape.

New Jersey: Fairfield election investigation continues; polls open next Tuesday | NJ.com

Voters here will again head to the polls and select their township representatives for county Democratic Committee. A second election one week from Tuesday comes per the request of Superior Court Judge David Krell. The results from the June election were first disputed by candidates and later ruled on by Krell earlier this month.

He also ordered the case be turned over to the Division of Criminal Justice, which is under the state Attorney General’s office, for consideration of a full investigation. It is still unclear where that investigation stands. A response from the  Division of Criminal Justice was not received as of press time.

Attorney Samuel Serata, who represents candidates Ernie and Cindy Zirkle, said Monday he believed Krell signed his court order last week and the criminal justice division would have likely just received it. “It will be at least a month before any report comes out,” said Serata.

New Jersey: Electronic voting case prompts new election, investigation in Fairfield New Jersey | NJ.com

A new election for county Democratic Committee in Fairfield Township in Cumberland County will be held on Sept. 27, Superior Court Judge David Krell ordered Thursday. Further, Krell asked the state Attorney General’s office to turn the case over to their criminal justice division to consider pursuing a full investigation.

“I have my suspicions that something that happened here was improper,” Krell said during the second hearing of a case that involves the reliability of the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine. Krell does not, “and may never” know, what exactly took place regarding preparations of the ballot definitions used on Primary Election day here back in June.

New Jersey: County voting machines get chip upgrades | The Daily Journal

Cumberland County recently replaced computer chips in all its voting machines and completed background checks on five technicians who service them as a safeguard against tampering and inaccuracy.

But those upgrades, which are part of a statewide initiative, don’t sufficiently address flaws in the system used to cast votes, according to a woman who says an electronic machine cheated her and her husband in a recent election in Fairfield.

The recent upgrades to county voting machines were not related to the Fairfield case. Activists say, however, the Fairfield case just adds ammunition to their argument that New Jersey needs a paper record of election results.

New Jersey: Vote devices in New Jersey counties re-evaluated | Courier-Post

In the middle of a vast warehouse of Gloucester County voting machines last Wednesday, Gary Plummer replaced chips and resealed some of the 520 voting devices. Plummer’s Medford-based Election Support & Services Inc. has been contracted by several New Jersey counties — including Burlington and Camden — to help them comply with a controversial Superior Court order.

In February 2010, Judge Linda Feinberg ruled New Jersey’s11,000 voting machines be disconnected from the Internet and re-evaluated by a panel of experts, and that anyone who works with or on voting machines be subject to a criminal background check.

Feinberg’s order is being appealed by Rutgers University’s Constitutional Litigation Clinic and the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action, neither of which believes the court order goes far enough.

New Jersey: Judge wants expert witness, voting machine docs in Fairfield case | NJ.com

On its face, the voting irregularities stemming from Primary Election day in Fairfield Township looked like a simple switch-up. Democratic Executive Committee candidates Ernest and Cynthia Zirkle questioned the total votes they received. Upon research, it became clear they weren’t alone in doubting touch-screen Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines.

Superior Court Judge David E. Krell ruled Monday the Cumberland County Board of Elections must make available a number of documents tied to the voting machine used on June 7.

“The voting machine isn’t going to tell you anything,” said Krell of inspecting the Sequoia machine used at the polling place. However, the associated documentation produced by the machine during the programming process was of interest to him.

New Jersey: Payment to ES&S delayed over vote count bug | New Jersey Herald

Sussex County freeholders are withholding payment to the company that provides and services the county’s election computers until the board can get a face-to-face meeting with company representatives.

“Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no bugs in election software,” Freeholder Philip Crabb said during Wednesday’s meeting. “It just can’t happen.”

Crabb was the one who suggested pulling Elections Systems and Software from the list of bills for the freeholders to authorize payment. The amount of the bill was about $31,760 and is a regular payment under a maintenance and service agreement.

New Jersey: Vote count bug found; county blames software – ES&S iVotronic | New Jersey Herald

Primary Day problems in Sussex County were not a matter of the votes counting, but of counting the votes. Computer experts have traced the problem with Sussex County’s election results on Primary Day to a bug in the software used to tabulate votes.

Marge McCabe, administrator for the county Board of Elections, said Friday that she received a verbal report from Elections Systems and Software that the problem had been traced to programming. “I’m relieved there was no problem with the voting machines nor our procedures,” she said. “The problem was not in voting, but in tabulating.”

A full written report on what the ES&S experts found is expected soon.

New Jersey: Supreme Court reverses decision in Atlantic Beach Town Council election | TheSunNews.com

The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that two write-in candidates for seats on the Atlantic Beach Town Council may begin serving their terms as council members, saying there “was a direct attempt by the [Atlantic Beach Municipal Election Commission] to interfere with the full and fair expression of the voters’ choice.”

In the opinion, the state Supreme Court justices reversed a circuit court ruling that upheld the town election commission’s decision to overturn election results. Former town manager Carolyn Cole and the Rev. Windy Price were thedeclared winners in the town’s municipal election in November 2009.

New Jersey: “Human error” found in Fairfield New Jersey election results | NJ.com

A supposed malfunction of the problematic and much-debated Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines is being chalked up to human error. Results from Primary Election day last month puzzled two candidates who expected the exact opposite. Less than a month later, there’s a line in the sand being drawn between a second election and inspection of the voting machine itself.

“On Election Day, the votes cast for Candidates Vivian and Mark Henry registered for Candidates Cynthia and Ernest Zirkle, respectively,” read a statement addressed to all affected by the Democratic County Committee election in Fairfield.

According to documents provided to The News, Cumberland County Board of Elections Director Lizbeth Hernandez takes responsibility and regrets a pre-election programming error. Attached to a legal petition filed by the Zirkles were 28 affidavits from voters swearing they supported the two candidates. Those 28 votes of the 43 total cast on June 7 make up the majority.

New Jersey: Foster files court challenge to Smith-Reid’s Morristown New Jersey primary win | Daily Record

Toshiba Foster is asking a judge to overturn councilwoman Raline Smith-Reid’s victory in the 2nd Ward Democratic primary, alleging close to 100 violations involving dozens of votes that her attorneys say were cast illegally. The challenge comes two weeks after a recount determined Smith-Reid won the election by 21 votes, 196-175.

Sharon Weiner, an attorney representing Foster, said the papers were filed just in time to beat a deadline Tuesday for making such a challenge and after an examination of various voting records, including absentee ballots. She said some absentee ballots were “improperly handled” and in one case someone cast two votes, one by absentee ballot and another by provisional ballot.

“We’re asking the court to assume jurisdiction over these illegal votes,” Weiner said.

New Jersey: Voting machine fears hit home in Cumberland County | NJ.com

It’s been a while since concerns about the reliability of voting machines made news. It was a hot topic in the early 2000s, as worries over flimsy punchcard ballots (Remember the hanging chads?) gave way to concern about the reliability of electronic voting machines.

Electronic voting machines are the standard these days, but the lingering questions about reliability bubbled back to the surface locally this week with questions over a recent contest in Fairfield.

The race for Democratic executive committee featured Cindy and Ernie Zirkle against Vivian and Mark Henry. The Zirkles lost, according to the official tally, with Cindy getting 10 votes and Ernie a mere 9. Oddly, 28 Fairfield residents have signed affidavits declaring that they cast votes for the Zirkles.

The Sequoia AVC Advantage Direct-Recording Electronic Voting Machine was not operating properly, according to a petition filed by the Zirkles’ attorney.

New Jersey: Fairfield candidates contest election results, blaming touch-screen machines | NJ.com

Fewer than 50 people stepped up to a single Sequoia touch-screen voting machine on Primary Election day. Admittedly, that’s a low voter turnout total but apparently enough to cause controversy. Due to the alleged unreliability of that brand of touch-screen voting machines, two candidates want the results voided and a recount or new election held.

Current Deputy Mayor Ernest Zirkle received nine votes and resident Cynthia Zirkle got 10. What’s more, 28 Fairfield residents who voted in the early June primary election have signed affidavits that state they voted for the Zirkles. So, sore losers or the fallibility of a much-discussed modern machine? It would seem to be the latter.

New Jersey: Morris County New Jersey freeholder race remains in doubt as recount finds 4 Parsippany residents voted twice | Daily Record

A manual recount today of 1,605 absentee ballots reduced Morris County Republican freeholder candidate William Hank Lyon’s slim primary lead over incumbent Margaret Nordstrom to just six votes, down from last week’s tally of 10.

But the race is hardly over, as a new wrinkle has emerged in that county election workers have discovered that four Republicans registered in Parsippany voted twice, both by absentee and provisional ballots, and the state Attorney General’s Office has been asked for guidance.