By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
More than 100 vote-by-mail ballots for the June primary were not delivered to Mercer County election officials in time to be counted, with the county pointing the finger at the Postal Service.
The mistake impacted voters of both parties in every town but did not affect the outcome of any races, said Mercer County Board of Elections chairwoman Joanne Palmucci by phone Wednesday.
The problem came to light when the county went, July 6, to pick up its mail at the post office facility on Route 130 in Hamilton. The collection included the 130 ballots that should have been delivered well before then, as the Board of Elections is responsible for counting them.
“I was so flabbergasted by this, because this is a month later finding ballots,” she said.
In most cases, the ballots were postmarked May 31 or June 1, she said. Palmucci said the board was willing to have a special meeting to count them. But she said the state Attorney General’s Office, which serves as the board’s lawyer, advised that they could “absolutely not” be counted.
“There was no rhyme or reason for this, because every municipality had some in there and both parties were affected,” she said.
Palmucci said “there’s no question” that this was a post office mistake. “I’m sure they’re never going to call me and say, ‘Oh, by the way, we made this mistake, it’s totally our fault.’ I know that’s not going to happen,” she said.
“We have contacted the Mercer County administration officials to discuss operational improvements,” the Postal Service said in a statement Wednesday. “The Postal Service prides itself on providing prompt, reliable and efficient services to our customers, whose election mailings remain a very high priority within the organization.”
A letter was sent to each impacted voter to explain the situation, Palmucci said in calling it an “unfortunate, isolated incident.”
Palmucci, a board member since 2004, said this has never happened before in her tenure.
The error comes with the county trying to encourage more residents to vote by mail. Last month, Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello announced plans to send every registered voter in Mercer — where there are some 227,000 registered voters-a vote-by-mail application.
Sollami Covello, in a phone interview Wednesday, said she plans to meet with postal officials at the Hamilton facility next week.
“Of course we have a concern that something like this could happen,” she said. “I just want to tell them that it’s unacceptable and intolerable. We can’t have this happen.”
Sollami Covello has touted her plan to encourage voter participation by promoting the vote-by-mail option. But elections board member Anthony J. Conti expressed concern this week that she did not speak to him and other board members about the idea, something he only learned of by reading about in a newspaper.
At the board’s meeting Tuesday, he raised the specter of voter fraud as well pointing to the sheer volume of work that will fall into the board’s lap if large numbers of voters cast ballots by mail.
“Once she licks the envelopes and sends them out, her job is done,” said Conti, a Republican and former Trenton City Clerk in speaking of Sollami Covello.
He noted that in last year’s general election, the board had received 16,000 vote-by-mail-ballots, in a presidential contest, and that it had taken five days to get final election results. He said he hoped freeholders would be willing to provide $200,000 in funds to cover the board’s costs for this year.
Another board member, Anthony R. Francioso, also pointed to the logistics of having enough space and staff to handle the work.
“We don’t have any idea of how many are going to come in,” he said in adding that the 16,000 from last year’s election “completely overwhelmed us.”
For her part, Sollami Covello said her plan was not a surprise, something that she had presented to Mercer County freeholders at a budget hearing in March, and that she had notified Palmucci of what would be happening “on many occasions.”
“The board of elections, their job is to count vote-by-mail-votes, so they get paid, each of those board members gets paid to do that job,” Sollami Covello said. “So I’m sorry if this is going to cause them more work. However, it is their job to count vote-by-mail votes.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Conti said 36 percent of the mail-in-ballots from the last election had to be rejected.
Touching on the possibility of fraud, Conti asked: “But how do we know who’s filling out this mail-in-ballot?”
“We don’t,” Palmucci, a Democrat, replied.
“Exactly, so there goes the integrity of your election,” he said.
Sollami Covello, however, said ballots would be sent to registered voters.
