Provisional ballots delay results of ward question

The day after the election, Empower Our Neighborhoods, Unite New Brunswick, the city and voters were expecting to know the final results of the ward-based system question altering the composition of the city council, but now they will have to wait two more days.
The results — which could change the council to the hybrid, ward system proposed by EON or remain at-large as advocated by UNB — were originally delayed because a number of absentee and provisional ballots were not yet counted, New Brunswick City Spokesman Bill Bray said.
The ballots were expected to be counted by yesterday, but the results will not be released to the public until tomorrow, Bray said.
Now there are mostly provisional ballots remaining, EON member Charlie Kratovil said. There are about 200 yet to be counted.
The Middlesex County Board of Elections could not be reached for comment at press time, but Bray said the board is working to get the results out.
“The provisional ballots are in their hands,” he said.
The ballots are not being counted yet because a lot of voters were denied the right to vote at the polls, EON President Martha Guarnieri said. Many had to fill out a paper provisional ballot because of improper identification or because addresses on IDs did not match the address registered.
Guarnieri said some students had to mail in copies of their IDs to the Middlesex County Board of Elections Office within 48 hours after the election.
“This allows you to still vote and then send your ID in after,” said Guarnieri, a Rutgers College senior.
The Board of Elections Office is still waiting to receive all of the copies so that they can count the remaining ballots, she said.
Guarnieri said she hopes any students that voted and were asked to send in copies of their IDs remember to send them so their votes are counted.
“I just want to remind all students who voted and did not send a copy of their ID in yet to do so as soon as possible,” she said.
Kratovil said EON would remain persistent within the next few days to be sure all the eligible votes are counted.
“Those ballots should be counted, and if we’re involved, they will be counted,” Kratovil said.
EON member John Aspray said a lot of the issues had to do with many students’ campus addresses not matching their home addresses on their IDs, so they were denied the ability to vote at the machines.
“People registered to vote for [the] president at these addresses, and they were not allowed to vote again with [those addresses],” said Aspray, a Rutgers College senior. “Whatever those provisional ballots say needs to be heard.”
UNB member Kyle Kirkpatrick said the heavy use of provisional ballots on Tuesday may have been from mistakes made on applications or it may be from voters who were trying to vote in New Brunswick when they were not eligible to.
 “Some [of the provisional ballots] may be from people who weren’t allowed to vote there, and some may be just from human error,” Kirkpatrick said.
Proper identification is required to register to vote in the first place, so a lot of the provisional ballots may have been due to mix-ups like misspelled names on applications, rather than the voter fraud so many people were expecting, Kratovil said.
“To register to vote, you have to have an ID,” he said. “You can’t just say ‘Hey, my name is Joe and I want to vote.’”
Kratovil said he believes a majority of the provisional ballots are “Yes to wards” votes, because they were mainly ballots from the area around the College Avenue campus, which he believes is composed of mostly “yes voters.”
Kirkpatrick said this is not something anyone can predict if they have not seen the ballots.
“I know that [the ballots are from voters] city-wide,” Kirkpatrick said. “It can be mixed all over the city. There’s no way I can predict which way it’s going to swing. It’ll be pointless.”
He said the fact that the results will not be available until tomorrow shows how close the election was.
“The fact that it’s come so close it is at least indicative that people are passionate about [the ward question] one way or another,” Kirkpatrick said. “[Voters] care about what is going on in New Brunswick — regardless of the outcome.”

Comments

7 comments

yarpsa

Thu Nov 5 2009 17:40

@actual resident

Not at all. I think there should be a statewide system to enfranchise voters to whom that happened, but unfortunately, that is not in place

What I stated prior, however, IS the law, and when people ask where they would vote for governor given that info, that's what I told them.

actual resident

Thu Nov 5 2009 16:06

@yarpsa said: "The one exception is people who had registered in NB, moved out of county, and hadn't re-registered there. Those people could ONLY vote in New Brunswick, and in order to cast a vote for governor, could only vote here."

are you actually saying that former residents of new brunswick should still be able to vote on municipal issues?

yarpsa

Thu Nov 5 2009 15:35

Any voter who lives in New Brunswick, even if not at the address they previously registered at, is entitled to vote by provisional ballot. Multiple people who voted last November and/or in June were turned away because they weren't in the books. They demanded provisional ballots, and in many cases were challenged by poll workers and Corzine/Vote No Challengers.

Additionally, if you registered in New Brunswick, and moved out of county, you are entitled to a vote by provisional in New Brunswick. You can't vote by provisional in the county where you reside, and you CANNOT BE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. The provisional ballot is the mechanism by which people's qualifications can be evaluated at the Board of Elections, away from Election Day chaos, which is why provisional ballots exist.

One last thing: YOU DON'T NEED ID TO VOTE. They check your signature against the one on your form. IT IS ILLEGAL FOR POLL WORKERS TO DEMAND ID.

I was working at Lincoln School on Tuesday, and there certainly was some hassling going on. Poll Workers were yelling at voters, Vote No literature was distributed within 100 ft of the polls (illegally). Not once did I ever see or hear a student ask to vote who lived outside of NB, except for out-of-county folks who just wanted to vote for governor.

And I can also guarantee that no EON people told commuters to vote. That is blatantly false. All canvassers, poll workers, challengers, phone bankers, and distributers of literature were trained in election law, and no one working for the campaign advised commuters to vote, despite not living in New Brunswick. The one exception is people who had registered in NB, moved out of county, and hadn't re-registered there. Those people could ONLY vote in New Brunswick, and in order to cast a vote for governor, could only vote here.

Your name

Thu Nov 5 2009 14:58

seems to be surfacing that multiple people were approached and told to go vote (by eon people) even if they weren't registered, and to ask for a provisional ballot. and apparently poll workers are saying they were harassed by non registered voters who were demanding to vote even though they werent in the books or had wrong id. i dont know anything about election law but is that legal?

Your name

Thu Nov 5 2009 13:48

Your name:
Same thing happened to me. Except at the end I replied that I don't give a rat's a** about New Brunswick. If Rutgers wasn't here, New Brunswick would be an empty shell of a run down ghetto. The students keep this place up, the University keeps this place up. The University administration already works with the city of New Brunswick. This isn't "empower our neighborhoods" it's "empower the students." If EON wanted empower students, they'd be fighting the University and the city, not just the city.
I don't care about this city at all and next time someone from EON comes up to you, ask them what they get out of it.

Your name

Thu Nov 5 2009 10:47

a few days before the election someone came up to me on the street and told me to vote yes for wards. When i told him i was a commuter and wasnt registered to vote in nb, he said i should go try and vote anyway and when they told me i couldnt, demand a provisional ballot. i told him that was dishonest, if not illegal, and he replied saying that if i cared about the city i should do it.

Duh

Thu Nov 5 2009 08:50

What a joke this is.

The justice deaprtment needs to get involved and investigate this! Anyone being kept from voting is a huge shame and a disgrace. If you live here and are registered you should be able to vote with proper ID.

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