By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Essex County election officials and workers here, along with affected municipal clerks and school board secretaries, are applying Gov. Phil Murphy’s latest executive orders for the April 20 and May 11 elections while you read this.
Those changes may be seen in your mailbox, and maybe at your municipal voting machine polling station, on or around April 1 and/or May. 1. Those changes came from Murphy’s Executive Orders 216 and 203, issued Jan. 25 and Nov. 25 – and pending pre-March 1 State Legislature votes.
The Vote-By-Mail Ballot you will receive in the mail, for example, will be the only mailing you get from Essex County Board of Elections Superintendent Patricia Spagno (D-West Orange) and County Clerk Christopher Durkin (D-Roseland). Your accustomed Spring 2021 sample ballots will not be mailed but most likely found on essexclerk.com
Eliminating hardcopy sample ballots was issued in Murphy’s Executive Order 216 Jan. 25.
“I want the election information process to be more efficient,” said Murphy (D-Rumson) Jan. 25, “for election officials and workers who send out paper ballots.”
This change was among Murphy’s orders to consolidate Jan. 26 fire district and any scheduled Feb. 16 special school board elections into April 20. These said elections are usually found among Central and Southern New Jersey locales.
Your VBM Ballot may include two pending in-person polling station locations and early voting hours.
You may get two locations to personally vote at: The Essex County Hall of Records and a designated municipal voting station.
State Senate Bill S3203, sponsored by Sen. Nia Gill (D-Montclair) will have county election boards designate at least one in-person polling station per municipality. The towns’ polling booths would supplement ones set up for countywide registered voters last year.
Essex County Clerk Christopher Durkin and then-Board of Elections Superintendent Linda Von Nessi had added county-wide in-person polling stations at Newark’s Prudential Center and West Orange’s Codey Arena for the Nov. 3 General Election.
Gill’s legislation spells out where those municipal stations will not be located: “school buildings and buildings used as schools. The language would exclude for example, the Newark Public Schools Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.-turned-NorthStar Fairmount Heights Elementary School in Newark for April 20.
S2303, furthermore, does not rule out the use of houses of worship for polling stations. The proposed legislation appears to not require polling locations to meet the federal Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
Your next VBM/sample ballot, pending S2303’s passage, may also have your county and municipal polling stations’ opening hours in advance of April 20 and May 11.
The bill would allow in-person voting for 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays and 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Sundays for 15 days ahead of “Election Day.” Those polling stations will not be open, however, on the day before Election Day.
“Local Talk” has calculated the prospective periods to be April 5-18 for the April 20 school board and April 25-May 9 nonpartisan municipal elections.
S2303 has cleared the State Senate Appropriations Committee Feb. 22 but, as of press time, is waiting to see how its Assembly version clears its committee.
A4830, sponsored by Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-So. Brunswick), appropriates $2 million to the counties to pay for the extra polling booth hours.
Zwicker’s bill, however, trims early in-person voting to 10 days before a Presidential General Election, five days before Presidential primaries – and three days for “non-Presidential primaries.”
A4830 has Assembly Members Ralph Caputo (D-Belleville) Mila Jasey (D-South Orange) and Cleopatra Tucker (D-Newark) among its co-sponsors.
State Senate and General Assembly members, who will reconcile both bills’ differences in a post-vote committee, are running out of time to have it take effect for April 20 and May 11.
Prospective school board and nonpartisan municipal candidates, by another Murphy executive order, are meanwhile allowed to get physical and electronic signatures for their election petitions.
Those petitions still have to be filed to or in school board secretary and municipal clerk offices on or before 4 p.m., of the 60th day before an election.
“Local Talk” translates that 60-calendar-days’ filing period for the May 11 elections going out to March 12. April 20’s school board deadline, Feb. 19, has passed.
Irvington and Newark voters are to decide on at least three public school board candidates each April 20 and South Orange three village trustee candidates May 11 – giving voters in the other nine “Local Talk” towns a “spring training” opportunity to check with Essex County on their registration accuracy.
