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.

New Jersey: Primary election results still under review – by the vendor ES&S | New Jersey Herald

The final audit of primary election results is still under way. To ensure accuracy, the Sussex County Board of Elections will spend the next few days “carefully and methodically” reviewing the numbers before sending the unofficial results to the county clerk for certification, Board Administrator Marge McCabe said.

While Sussex County Clerk Jeff Parrott expects the results to be certified Monday afternoon, McCabe said the process will take longer. Election results must be certified within 10 days of an election.

Once the results are certified, the Board of Elections and voting machine technicians from Elections, Systems & Software, will analyze the recent glitches for answers.

New Jersey: Vote count glitch probed in Sussex County – ES&S iVotronic | New Jersey Herald

The unofficial results from Tuesday's primary election are in, again, and there are no official winners, yet, but the numbers all match up, unofficially. The computer problems that shut down the counting of votes were solved the next day when a consultant from Elections, Systems & Software, the software provider for the county's election board, suggested the board should just start over. And that is just what it did.

… The number of voters matched the number of voters recorded on the paper records that poll workers keep at each polling place, McCabe said. And there were no surprises or recall of winners with Wednesday's tabulations, now unofficially being reviewed by the Sussex County Clerk's Office, which must confirm the totals before they become official.

The one thing that was officially confirmed Tuesday is that the county has a glitch in the election process, and no one knows what causes it.

New Jersey: Malfunctioning Voting Machines Delay Primary Results in Somerset County NJ | Basking Ridge, NJ Patch

Somerset County’s primary election polls may have closed Tuesday night at 8 p.m., but the results were not posted online until Wednesday morning.

With several county districts experiencing malfunctioning machines and a few close races (including a nine-vote difference in a Branchburg race), County Clerk Brett Radi explained, “I didn’t post them because we still had some ballots that needed to be added. I didn’t want to have results that didn’t reflect what was really going on.”

“We just didn’t do a final update, because we didn’t have the ‘emergencies’ [emergency ballots used when machines malfunction],” he noted.

New Jersey: Faulty parts delay election results in Middlesex County NJ | MyCentralJersey.com

It was late Tuesday night — hours after the polls closed for the primary elections — and some candidates still had yet to learn the final vote tally. That’s because municipal clerks in Monroe, Plainsboro, South River and Woodbridge, many of whom started their day at 5 a.m., clocked out without ever learning the unofficial results because of an issue with some of the voting machines.

“To work those kind of hours and not be able to give the candidates their results is frustrating,” Monroe Township Clerk Sharon Doerfler said.

In Monroe, four of the voting machines were printing illegible numbers that ran over the top of one another. Like every other municipality, Monroe’s poll workers received an emergency number to call in the event of a malfunctioning voter machine.

New Jersey: Computer snag delays Montclair NJ Primary Election vote tally | NorthJersey.com

Due to a computer-software glitch, Montclair still didn't have its Primary Election results as of Wednesday afternoon, and was doubtful about having them by the end of yesterday.

"A nightmare. Never had this happen before," Township Deputy Clerk Carla Horowitz said Tuesday night as the township was struggling to tally the local results after a computer program went awry.

Late Wednesday morning, the Clerk's Office still wasn't able to get an accurate count of Montclair's votes and the municipal Information Technology officer was away, so he couldn't help.

"We worked on it this morning," Horowitz said. "The program seems to be working a little bit better."

Editorials: Voters need to be able to register at polls | NJ.com

Gabriela G., Annalee S. and Ed V. are Rutgers University students who eagerly went to the polls to vote in the November 2008 general election. All three had registered to vote, prior to the 21-day deadline, from their college addresses.

However, when they went to cast their ballots, they were surprised to find that their names were not on the voting lists. They were directed to either leave the polling place or to vote by paper provisional ballots, which are checked post-election against the voting rolls. However, they were not informed of the strong likelihood that their provisional ballots would be thrown out, since their names were not in the system.

 

New Jersey: Technical glitch shakes up Sussex County New Jersey election results – ES&S iVotronic DRE | New Jersey Herald

Past Cinderella’s curfew and beyond the target deadline for the Sussex County Board of Elections, a small gathering including Freeholder Rich Vohden, freeholder candidate Dennis Mudrick, acting County Clerk Jeffrey Parrott, Sheriff Michael Strada and two of Franklin Mayor Paul Crowley’s children waited for results of the Tuesday primary election. The unofficial results that never came.

Numbers appeared to be coming in smoothly for the first half of the evening. However, as charts displaying unofficial results flashed on the wall via a projector, watchers noticed the number of reporting districts changed, and not always in an upwards direction. According to the results, the number of districts reporting numbers were decreasing, and the number of Walpack votes totaled   61, though only 22 registered voters reside in the community.

New Jersey: Troublesome voting machine cartridge from East Hanover New Jersey likely to decide Morris freeholder race – Sequoia Advantage DRE | dailyrecord.com

A vote cartridge from East Hanover that is expected to be read today may reveal whether Republican Freeholder incumbent Margaret Nordstrom or challenger William "Hank" Lyon won the primary nomination Tuesday night.

As of this morning Lyon, a resident of the Towaco section of Montville who works for his familys restaurant business, Qdoba Mexican Grill, had a six-vote lead over Nordstrom, a freeholder since 1999.

The unofficial tallies are Lyon with 12,234 votes and Nordstrom with 12, 228 votes. But one vote cartridge in East Hanover could not be read last night so county election officials today got a court order from Superior Court Assignment Judge Thomas Weisenbeck to have the cartridge removed from the voting machine and brought to the Morris County Clerks office where it will be read and recorded by witnesses.

New Jersey: Norcross bill would return date for presidential primary elections in New Jersey to June | NJ.com

Legislation to return the date of the February presidential primary election to June was approved Thursday by the Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism and Historic Preservation Committee.

The bill , sponsored by Sen. Donald Norcross, D-Camden, would eliminate the separate presidential primary election held in February and require, instead, that it be held during the regular June primary election, as it was prior to 2005. The move would save approximately $11 million in fiscal year 2012, according to the Office of Legislative Services.

New Jersey: New Jersey mail-in ballot bill should be shoo-in | The Asbury Park Press

A few years ago, New Jersey began allowing anyone who wanted to vote in elections using a mail-in absentee ballot to do so. It was a good idea that caught on with aging voters who have trouble getting out and with time-strapped voters who simply find it easier to vote at their leisure than to go to a polling place on Election Day.

Now, legislation passed by both the state Senate and Assembly will make it that much easier for people who vote by mail to ensure they continue to receive mail-in ballots, if Gov. Chris Christie signs it into law, as he should.

New Jersey: Advocacy groups, students argue N.J. should allow voter registration on Election Day | NJ.com

The times have changed, but a key part of the state’s election law is still stuck in the past, according to a coalition of students and advocacy groups that filed a challenge to New Jersey’s voter-registration law today.

Instead of requiring 21 days to process a voter registration, the state should get with the times and allow people to sign up on Election Day, the plaintiffs argued. Thousands of residents are locked out of the voting booth every year because they don’t file their paperwork on time, they said, and the law is especially cumbersome for highly mobile people like college students.