New Jersey: State fights back over special election | Courier-Post

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration fought back Tuesday against Democrats who are trying to get a court to move the special U.S. Senate election from the October date he chose to the same day as the November general election. The state filed papers asserting that Christie was within his legal rights to schedule the election when he did, and that changing course now would be damaging. “The harms that will flow from the stay that they seek significantly outweigh any purported harms resulting from its denial,” the state government’s lawyers said in the filing with an appeals court Tuesday. The next step in the case will likely be oral arguments, which have not been scheduled.

New Jersey: Judges Weigh Christie’s Call for New Jersey Special Election | Wall Street Journal

A New Jersey appeals court is mulling the merits of a last-minute legal challenge to Gov. Chris Christie’s call for a U.S. Senate special election this October, even as the race for the seat last held by the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg has quickly taken shape. A three-judge panel is expected to decide soon how to proceed with a legal filing that asks for the interim senator to be selected during the state’s regular election on Nov. 5, rather than by holding a special election on Oct. 16, as requested by Mr. Christie. Both sides in the case concluded filing briefs Wednesday. The Appellate Division has yet to announce whether it will hold oral arguments for the case. The governor said he wants the special election to be held to allow voters to fill the seat as soon as possible. In November, all state lawmakers are up for election, including Mr. Christie. The Republican is seeking re-election against Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono. Marguerite Schaffer, chairwoman of the Somerset County Democratic Party—and a Buono supporter—filed the case pro bono on Friday, arguing that the special election would confuse voters unaccustomed to voting on a Wednesday or just before a statewide election.

New Jersey: Christie defends special election to fill Lautenberg’s vacant U.S. Senate seat | The Political State | NorthJersey.com

Governor Christie stood by his decision to hold a special election to fill Frank Lautenberg’s U.S. Senate seat and said he doesn’t think the abbreviated election cycle benefits any one candidate. “If people want to sue, let them go to the courts, that’s what the courts are there for,” Christie said during a State House news conference. “And we’ll rise or fall on that basis, but I certainly have no second thoughts about it.” Peg Shaffer, the chairwoman of the Somerset County Democratic Committee, filed a legal challenge to the special election date Monday. The state Attorney General has until Tuesday to file a response with the Appellate Division. Holding a separate special election will cost about $12 million. In addition, Christie’s opponent in the November election, state Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, is circulating a petition demanding Christie move the special election to November.

New Jersey: Legislation Introduced To Move November General Election To October | Politicker NJ

Senator Shirley K. Turner (D-Mercer/Hunterdon) has introduced legislation today to save taxpayers millions of dollars by changing this year’s November General election to coincide with the special election scheduled for October 16; the General election would revert back to November in 2014. Senator Turner also introduced a second bill to eliminate the option of a special election to fill vacancies in either house of Congress and require that individuals who receive temporary appointments to fill such vacancies be of the same political party as the person vacating the position. State law currently allows the governor to hold a special election or appoint an interim to fulfill the full term of the predecessor.

New Jersey: Appellate court: Democrat can proceed with lawsuit to reschedule Senate special election | NorthJersey.com

A county Democratic chairwoman can proceed with a lawsuit trying to have Governor Christie reschedule the special election to fill Frank Lautenberg’s U.S. Senate seat, a pair of appellate judges ruled Friday afternoon. August’s special election will cause “voter suppression and confusion” and cost the state millions of dollars, said Peg Schaffer, the chairwoman of the Somerset County Democratic Committee. She asked the courts for permission to file the suit earlier on Friday. Schaffer endorsed state Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, Christie’s Democratic opponent in November’s gubernatorial election. But she said she wasn’t representing Buono in the lawsuit.

New Jersey: Democrats slam cost for special election | The Asbury Park Press

Taxpayers will have to spend an additional $11.9 million for an Oct. 16 special election to replace Sen. Frank Lautenberg, now that Gov. Chris Christie decided against consolidating the vote with the Nov. 5 general election. Democrats charged that the move was all about politics, noting that Christie is on the November ballot seeking his second four-year term as governor. Democrats said the Republican governor wanted to avoid sharing that ballot with a strong Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker or Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., despite the extra expense to the taxpayers. Christie insisted politics was not a consideration in laying out the separate election dates. “The costs associated with having the special election and primary, in my mind, cannot be measured against the value of having an elected member of the U.S. Senate. I don’t know what the costs are and, quite frankly, I don’t care,” Christie said.

New Jersey: Why New Jersey is holding a Wednesday election | Washington Post

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Tuesday set an Oct. 16 special election to fill the vacancy created by the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Oct. 16 is a Wednesday. Elections are usually held on a Tuesday. What gives? The election is happening on a Wednesday because it’s the soonest possible date it could be held under the writ Christie issued. State law holds that the primary be held 70-76 days after the writ Christie issued Tuesday, with a general election to follow 64-70 days after that.

New Jersey: Several mull run for U.S. Senate special election while Democrats consider challenging it | NorthJersey.com

Potential U.S. Senate candidates scrambled to muster support as Democrats considered a legal challenge to the special election Governor Christie set for October and questions grew about the $24 million price tag, with one lawmaker pushing to move up the November election. With the primary over and the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s funeral behind him, Christie will soon decide on his appointment for the vacant seat, sources close to the governor said Wednesday. During his Tuesday news conference announcing the special election, Christie indicated he wanted to have a replacement in Washington, D.C. next week when Congress debates immigration reform. A spokesman for Newark Mayor Cory Booker said volunteers were out collecting signatures Wednesday, but would not say whether the Democrat would announce a run. Only one person has formally declared his candidacy for the August primary – former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan, a conservative Republican. And some potential candidates have already taken themselves out of the running, Republican Sen. Tom Kean Jr. and Sen. Kevin O’Toole both said they are focused on winning reelection to their state offices. Democrats, meanwhile, are still exploring going to court to block the special election.

New Jersey: The cost of Christie’s decision | Asbury Park Press

Using New Jersey Office of Legislative Services estimates, Assembly Democrats say that a special primary election and a special general election, as ordered by Gov. Chris Christie, will cost a total of $23.8 million. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said Christie could have saved $11.9 million in taxpayer money by having the special election on the same date as the Nov. 5 general election. The cost estimate is based on two main components: the expenses of the counties and municipalities in administering the election and the salaries of poll workers conducting the election. According to the Division of Elections in the Department of State, the costs for items such as ballot printing and postage, processing, legal advertising, polling place rental and voting machine delivery for a special election would be approximately $6.5 million.

New Jersey: Chris Christie’s Catch-22 — and why he made the right (political) decision | Washington Post

To hear the political media tell it, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) made a stinker of a decision Tuesday by setting the state’s special Senate election for Oct. 16 rather than on the same day as the general election either this year or in 2014. But the decision was probably the best of three bad options for Christie. The Star-Ledger editorial board blasted Christie for a “self-serving stunt“, and it was joined in that criticism by several politicians — most of them Democrats. But as is often the case with Senate vacancies — this one created by the death of Democratic Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg — the controversy was probably unavoidable. Giving a governor carte blanche to interpret the law and make an interim appointment these days often ends poorly (see: Blagojevich, Rod; Paterson; David; and Abercrombie, Neil). In addition, New Jersey special election law put Christie in an especially unenviable position because it is highly contradictory and totally open to interpretation.

New Jersey: Christie Criticized for Cost and Timing of Senate Election | New York Times

Gov. Chris Christie announced on Tuesday a highly unusual special election that was immediately criticized for costing the state $24 million and setting up a schedule that was likely to confuse the voting public. Voters will go to the polls on a Wednesday in October to cast ballots for a new senator, then return just three weeks later for the regularly scheduled general election, in which Mr. Christie will stand for a second term. For Mr. Christie, a Republican who has cultivated an image as a tough-talking independent, the rapidly made choice represented a calculated risk — to endure short-term criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in order to protect his longer-term goals of winning re-election and positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016.

New Jersey: Christie calls special election for this fall, angering some Republicans | Los Angeles Times

Saying he wanted to give voters “a choice and a voice in the process,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie scheduled a special election in October to fill the seat vacated by the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, a move that risks worsening strained relations with national Republican activists, but which carries several political advantages for him at home. Republican strategists in Washington had hoped Christie would skip a special election and appoint a strong candidate who would fill the seat until the regularly scheduled 2014 election. That would give the appointee the advantage of incumbency and would have given Republicans their best chance to hold the seat in a heavily Democratic state. But Democrats were certain to go to court if Christie did not call an election this year, creating a battle as Christie runs for reelection. New Jersey law is ambiguous about how to fill vacancies in the state’s U.S. Senate seats, and a court might have overturned a decision to skip a special election.

New Jersey: Christie faces major decision in Senate choice | Associated Press

In filling a vacant Senate seat, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie faces a significant choice fraught with political implications for his re-election campaign and, perhaps, a future presidential run. Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s death Monday presents the state’s popular Republican governor with a series of decisions that carry consequences beyond who will serve as New Jersey’s next U.S. senator. While Republicans and Democrats alike will be watching Christie’s next moves closely, there’s no telling what the governor _ who has staked out a reputation for going his own way _ will do. “I give him praise on a life well-lived,” Christie said of the Democratic senator with whom he frequently tangled. The governor made the comment during an appearance at a women’s conference and then canceled the rest of his public schedule Monday, clearly mindful of the high stakes involved in choosing Lautenberg’s successor.

New Jersey: Defeated Passaic candidate vows to sue over election results | NorthJersey.com

Jose Sandoval, one of four defeated candidates in Tuesday’s mayoral race, said he plans to legally challenge the election’s results because the paperless machines on which voters cast their ballots cannot verify votes. Sandoval went to a county warehouse Friday morning accompanied by defeated candidate Pablo Plaza and Passaic County elections officials to retrieve a printout from each of the machines used in the election. Mayor Alex D. Blanco crushed Sandoval, his closest contender in the election, by a margin of 4,377 to 1,880. Plaza ended up with just hundreds of votes. The printouts collected by county officials on Friday seemed to confirm those election results, Sandoval said. “This does not prove those machines had not been tampered with,” Sandoval said about the voting printouts.

New Jersey: Losing challenger in Passaic mayoral race says machines rigged, wants recount | NorthJersey.com

A day after Mayor Alex D. Blanco and his ticket of four City Council incumbents cruised to victory, challenger Jose Sandoval contends the electronic voting machines were rigged against him and he’s demanding a recount. Sandoval said he had 500 get-out-the-vote volunteers Tuesday and had expected to get at least 3,000 votes. But he polled just 1,880 and was crushed by Blanco, who received 4,377 votes and carried all 30 polling districts. “I had 3,000 votes in the bank,” Sandoval said Wednesday. “They stole this election from me. The machines must have been tampered with.” Sandoval wants to hire his own expert to check the electronic Sequoia brand voting machines used on Tuesday. And he plans to go to Superior Court this week to ask for a recount.

New Jersey: Christie vetoes early voting bill, angering Democrats | NJ.com

Calling the proposal “hasty, counterproductive and less reliable,” Gov. Chris Christie today vetoed a bill that would have let residents vote at their polling place starting 15 days before Election Day. The move was instantly criticized by Democrats who accused the Republican governor of trying to stifle the vote. Under the bill (S2364), voters could have cast ballots in person at their polling places until the Sunday before the primary or general election. Voters can currently cast a “mail-in-ballot” by mailing or hand-delivering a competed ballot to their county clerk starting 45 days before the election, Christie said in his two-page veto message.

New Jersey: Elections official pans New Jersey early-voting bill | Philadelphia Inquirer

Joanne Nyikita is all for early voting, just not the way it is set up in a bill sitting on the governor’s desk. Nyikita is superintendent of elections in Burlington County, and in the weeks before a presidential election, she says, she and her staff work 15-hour days, seven days a week, registering voters and making sure things run smoothly. By in effect adding two weeks before the election during which voters can cast their ballots, she said, the state would vastly increase the work of already overstretched county election boards. Nyikita said that creating an electronic database for early-voting records would greatly lighten the load, but that there was no money for it. “It could not be done every day for two weeks. It simply could not be done,” said Nyikita, executive vice president of the New Jersey Association of Election Officials.

New Jersey: Local governments oppose early voting legislation | NorthJersey.com

Legislation ensuring every resident in the state the right to vote 15 days before certain elections awaits Governor Christie’s signature, and municipal officials in northwest Bergen County are holding their collective breath. “This is going to cause pure havoc,” said Waldwick Borough Clerk Paula Jaegge, who was initially concerned that every municipality would be required to provide polling locations. “We would have to reschedule meetings and juggle a lot of things around to make this work for that long a time period.” An amendment to the bill, which cleared its last legislative hurdle last week, instead would require seven polling locations in Bergen, a figure based on its population. The county Board of Elections would be responsible for determining where the polling locations would be. Even so, many are questioning the need for it at all. “We already have it,” said state Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Cresskill, who represents District 39, which includes Ramsey, Mahwah and Oakland. “We have early voting through vote by mail. This just creates a whole series of expenses, more government layers.”

New Jersey: Bill to allow voting more than two weeks before Election Day passes Senate | NJ.com

A bill to allow residents to cast votes at polling places starting 15 days before Election Day is one step closer to reaching the governor’s desk. The Senate today voted 24-16 to pass the early voting bill (S2364), which would let voters cast their ballots early until the Sunday before the election. State Sen. Nia Gill (D-Essex) said she wants to encourage residents’ participation in democracy. “Early voting would ensure that even in an emergency, just as a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy, or in case of unforeseen personal scheduling conflicts, residents will still be able to get to the polls and exercise their most fundamental right to vote.”

New Jersey: Voting machines vulnerable, groups tell judges | NorthJersey.com

The state’s voting machines are so vulnerable to tampering and error that it’s impossible to tell whether ballots are counted properly, a coalition of civil rights groups told an appellate panel Tuesday in a long-running case that has drawn national attention from computer security experts and voting officials. The three judges must decide whether to order the state to replace tens of thousands of electronic voting machines with newer technology designed to be more secure. The problem, advocates say, isn’t just theoretical: Voting machine irregularities caused a Superior Court judge to throw out a South Jersey election in 2011. Critics say it’s impossible to determine whether that was an isolated incident.

New Jersey: Lawyers: Voting machines could be hacked, should be replaced | NJ.com

Voting rights lawyers said today some of New Jersey’s digital voting machines must be replaced because they are vulnerable to hackers who could change the outcome of elections. “We are in a state that values and prizes the right to vote,” Penny Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers University-Newark, told a three-judge appeals court panel in Trenton. “We believe that this court should review the record anew and look at the science very carefully.” Continuing a fight that has lasted nearly a decade, Venetis wants the appeals court to overrule a lower court judge who allowed counties across New Jersey to continue using the computerized voting systems. Venetis said the systems leave no paper trail, complicating recounts in any instance where fraud or mistakes happen. She said it would not be difficult for a computer hacker to gain access to a machine and change its software to register votes for one candidate over another. “You can press what you think is candidate A’s button and it registers a vote for candidate B,” she said. But the state argued that there is no perfect system, paperless machines do not present “a severe restriction on the right to vote” and replacing the equipment will simply cost too much.

New Jersey: Rutgers–Newark Law Professor to Argue Case Against Flawed Electronic Voting Machines | Rutgers Today

On Tuesday March 5, 2013, Professor Penny Venetis of the Rutgers School of Law–Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinic will argue before the New Jersey Appellate Division and ask the court to decertify New Jersey’s insecure computerized voting machines. The case, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, Stephanie Harris, Coalition for Peace Action, etc. vs. Gov. Chris Christie, will be heard in Trenton beginning at 11:30 am. The clinic filed a lawsuit in 2004 charging that the voting machines violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, as well as voting rights statutes. New Jersey passed “gold standard” legislation in 2005 and 2008 to require computerized voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot. However, the State has yet to implement these statutes, leaving more than 5.5 million voters unprotected each Election Day. New Jersey is one of only six states that use computerized voting machines which cannot be audited.

New Jersey: Battered by Sandy, New Jersey Tries Email Voting with Mixed Results | Governing.com

When Superstorm Sandy wiped out a good chunk of the New Jersey shore just prior to the presidential elections last November, Gov. Chris Christie’s administration issued a directive allowing displaced citizens and first responders to vote electronically. Casting an email or fax vote may seem easy enough, but for some citizens and county election offices, the process wasn’t a walk in the park. Technology wasn’t a problem — procedures for voting electronically were already established so that military members and other overseas personnel could receive their ballots and vote by email. But preparing to receive votes from the general populace took around-the-clock efforts from county election staff already battered by the effects of Sandy. While the top of the ballots that contained federal election choices was already completed because of overseas voters, New Jersey counties had to extend those ballots to include the local races for each voter, which took time. But once that was done, sending out ballots and then qualifying people to vote electronically was a big challenge.

New Jersey: Democrats’ Bill Would Have New Jersey Offer Early Voting Option | njtoday.net

An Assembly panel today advanced a Democrat-sponsored bill that would allow early voting  in primary and general elections. The bill (A-3553) aims to give residents more voting alternatives following the Election Day woes created by Hurricane Sandy. “People are busy, and many have long work days or responsibilities that prevent them from hitting the polls on Election Day,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), one of the bill’s sponsors. “Then there are natural disasters that we simply can’t plan for. Sandy threw a wrench into the machinery of Election Day and created tremendous confusion. This is a matter of convenience and ensuring every resident who is registered and wants to vote will have the opportunity to do so.”

New Jersey: Democrats hit with $42,000 fine for robo calls in ’09 governor’s race | NorthJersey.com

The New Jersey Democratic Party has paid more than $42,000 to settle allegations that it improperly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a series of controversial automated campaign calls meant to pull support from Chris Christie in his 2009 campaign against former Gov. Jon Corzine. The party had faced more than $200,000 in fines stemming from the six in-kind contributions, which totaled $227,120.64, most of which were used to pay for automated phone calls, known as robo calls, that supported third-party candidate Chris Daggett, who was seen as drawing votes away from Christie.

New Jersey: Man charged in Essex County voter fraud case sentenced to 5 years in prison | NJ.com

The last defendant in a voter fraud case that once threatened some of Essex County’s most prominent politicians was sentenced today to five years in state prison, the state Attorney General’s Office said. John Fernandez, 61, of Belleville, who worked for the Essex County Department of Economic Development, was ordered to forfeit his job and was permanently barred from public employment in the state, the office said in a news release.

New Jersey: Electronic voting after Sandy “A Complete Mess,” says senate president Sweeney | newjerseynewsroom.com

New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney said New Jersey’s county clerks were not properly prepared to handle the state’s requests for election ballots after Hurricane Sandy. Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno allowed state residents affected by the storm to vote through e-mail or fax. Sweeney says county clerks told him they received thousands of requests for ballots in days leading up to the election. “There was no communication with local elections officials,” Sweeney told the Huffington Post. “It was a complete mess.” A spokesman for Guadagno said the decision was necessary because of the devastation of the storm.

New Jersey: Everyone Counts Secures 10-Year, Multimillion-Dollar Contract | San Diego Business Journal

Everyone Counts, a locally based provider of software as a service voting systems, recently received a 10-year contract from New Jersey to design the state’s voter registration system. The company’s eLect Registrator technology is based on its eLect Platform, which provides multiple layers of security, military-grade encryption of ballots and the ability to audit the system at any time, according to the company website.

New Jersey: Sussex County election boards finally get ballots to add up | NJ.com

The election boards in each of New Jersey’s 21 counties have certified their election results with the state. Many elections officials, however, expect they’ll be adjusting the totals for some time as provisional and federal overseas ballots continue to trickle into their offices. There aren’t enough outstanding late provisional ballots to alter the results of the Robert Menendez/Joe Kyrillos Senate race or the Barack Obama/Mitt Romney Presidential election. But for local races, such as school board and council elections, incoming ballots could make a difference. In Cumberland County, some of the unofficial election results—from polling places—were overturned by the addition of mail-in and provisional ballot counts. Meanwhile, Gloucester County and Morris County results remained unchanged.

New Jersey: Morris County closes out election after getting bombarded with mail, email, fax, provisional ballots | NJ.com

The votes are in. Finally. Morris County has certified its election, putting to rest most lingering doubts about who won what in an unconventional, post-Sandy election that saw a record number of mail-in votes and, for the first time, ballots sent by email and fax. The county had until Tuesday to certify the election, under an extension given by the state. Nearly 70 percent of Morris County’s registered voters took part in the election — with nearly 6 percent casting mail-in ballots (which includes the emailed and faxed ballots, as well as any cast early at county offices). Most of the rest showed up at the polls, even though several polling stations were moved as communities and utility companies scrambled to restore power after the superstorm. “One way or another, it’s done,” said Tony DeSimone, IT administrator for the Morris County Board of Elections.