Court-Date Awaited For S. Amboy Election Challenge
(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Dec. 1, 2010)
SOUTH AMBOY — When everyone following the 2010 election-results for Mayor
of South Amboy thought they had heard everything, something unbelievable
happened last Wednesday.
Five more election-ballots were discovered on Thanksgiving Eve at the
Middlesex County Board of Elections headquarters on Jersey Avenue in New
Brunswick.
Independent mayoral candidate Mary O’Connor told the Amboy Beacon that she
received a telephone-call at 3:15 p.m. that day: “The Board of Elections
found five provisional ballots.”
In what had been believed to have been “empty envelopes” when her
investigative team was at the building, five additional uncounted ballots were
discovered, she said.
“I’ve been down-there for days, asking for provisional ballots, and I was
told there were none,” O’Connor said. “The FBI was down-there a week ago,
scouring the place, and I’m sure they didn’t find them.”
Despite a recount held two weeks ago, it appears that the election of a new
Mayor is not over yet.
A request by O’Connor for a recount of the Nov. 2 city election’s votes in
her contest with Democratic City Council President Fred Henry and two
others — with only one vote separating her and Henry — was approved by Superior
Court Judge Philip Paley, sitting in New Brunswick.
Two days later, the recount — which cost O’Connor $248 — was conducted by
the Board of Elections at its Edison voting-machine warehouse, resulting in
an identical outcome.
Henry again received 1,075 votes to 1,061 for O’Connor on the city’s nine
voting-machines, based in various public buildings throughout the
one-square-mile municipality, for a slender 14-vote lead. This was shaven to three
votes after O’Connor received 59 Mail-In Ballots (MIBs), formerly known as
“absentee votes,” to 48 for Henry.
O’Connor also received seven of the 12 provisional (challenged) ballots
counted by the Board to five for Henry, further reducing his margin to one
vote. As Board member Donald Katz read-off the names, staffers with count-sheets
called-out “Five” each time five votes were tallied.
On Election Night, the 2010 campaign for two at-large Council seats and one
Ward Council seat resulted in the Democratic Council nominees easily
defeating their opponents, newcomer Gross leading with 1,135 unofficial votes,
followed by incumbent Councilman Joseph Connors with 1,014, Republican nominee
Saverio Sagliocco with 982, Independent Eugene “Gene” Reagan with 751 and
GOP nominee David Longenhagen with 680. Recently-appointed First Ward
Councilman Donald Applegate, running unopposed, received 463 unofficial votes.
Those numbers have changed slightly since then, but the margins were
sufficiently-wide to assure the Council winners of their victories.
Although there were 22 provisional ballots reported cast, only 12 of them
were counted by the Board after eight ballots were voided by the staff, and
the Board voted unanimously to accept seven of the ballots challenged by
O’Connor, rejecting only one of them. Those seven went back into the mix with
five unchallenged ballots, and were pumped-through a counting machine, after
the rest of the county’s provisionals were counted by that device.
That left a mysterious 10th uncounted provisional ballot — cast by a woman
who voted for O’Connor, but which was not examined by the Board —
unaccounted-for.
That ballot — discovered by the Independent’s researchers before she filed
her request for a recount — was voided reportedly because no records were
found to show that the voter had registered in-time to vote on Nov. 2.
However, the woman insisted that she registered to vote through the state Motor
Vehicle Commission (MVC).
If her ballot had been counted, there would have been a tie between
O’Connor and Henry with 1,128 votes each, thereby forcing a special election on
Tuesday, Jan. 18, with the city’s voters asked to choose between the two tied
candidates to succeed Mayor John O’Leary, who decided in March not to seek an
unprecedented seventh four-year term as Chief Executive of the “Pleasant
Little City.”
Another MIB, also reportedly for O’Connor, was found in the Board’s office
one week after the election, and this was rejected unanimously by the four
-member Board because the voter allegedly did not comply with proper
procedure.
At that emergency meeting, Administrator James Vokral explained that the
ballot was “put in the wrong pile” because the outer envelope in which it
was supposed-to be mailed was not used, but was replaced with a regular brown
envelope.
The voter placed his MIB inside the proper inner envelope and sealed it,
but failed to attach his signed certificate to the inner envelope.
“This ballot would have been voided even if it had been put in the proper
pile,” Vokral said.
However, that voter is believed to have signed an affidavit claiming that
he followed the Board’s instructions before he mailed his ballot.
O’Connor’s request to go further, if it is approved by Paley, would
include an examination of any heretofore uncounted MIBs and provisional ballots,
as well as challenges of specific individual ballots.
At-least one business-owner who lives in neighboring Sayreville and as many
as three police officers who live out-of-town may have participated in
South Amboy’s 2010 election, following a contentious campaign which was branded
by many observers as the city’s “dirtiest.”
In addition to the usual rash of reports of campaign-signs being torn-down
or put-up without authorization, this year’s local contest saw the
resurrection on a weekly basis of a bimonthly community newspaper which was defunct
for about 10 years, now unabashedly promoting the Democratic ticket; the
anonymous distribution of one flier depicting an O’Connor supporter in a Nazi
uniform, and another flier attacking O’Connor as a “terrorist,” and an
alleged “endorsement” of Mackiel’s candidacy by a non-existent “South Amboy Tea
Party.”
During Election Day itself, numerous complaints reportedly were made to the
Police Department, the Board of Elections and the state Attorney General’s
Office, which is believed to have sent an observer to the city to monitor
the voting.
One Council candidate was accused of “electioneering” at the Senior
Resource Center, S. Stevens Avenue, and was asked to leave; a photographer from an
out-of-county daily newspaper allegedly took random photos at a
polling-place and was escorted out, and eggs were said to have been thrown at an
O’Connor supporter’s car by Henry supporters, leading to a heated confrontation
involving the driver’s brother which police officers broke-up. There were
unconfirmed reports that off-duty police were called-out by Police Chief Darren
LaVigne to maintain order.
Because of suspected irregularities, FBI agents who raided the Board’s New
Brunswick headquarters and the County Clerk’s Office to investigate the June
8 Democratic primary election in the county seat are now believed to have
expanded the scope of their probe to other elections, possibly including
South Amboy’s.
The local race followed back-to-back municipal tax-increases of 38 percent
last year and 12 percent this year, plus an increase of over five percent in
school taxes approved in-between by the incumbent Council.
An Amendment to the Calendar Year 2010 Budget adopted by the Council is
expected to increase local taxes by another $722,576, on top of the $39 hike
previously-announced by the Administration and the Council, on a home assessed
at $266,000, the average in South Amboy, from the unamended spending plan.
Using the numbers provided with the CY 2010 Budget as introduced, the
amended Budget is expected to increase the municipal portion of taxes on the
average home by $268.
During the campaign, the challengers criticized the tax-hikes, pledging to
encourage more commercial tax-ratables to replace revenues now drawn from
residential property taxes, while the Democratic incumbents blamed the
tax-hikes on Republican Gov. Christopher Christie.
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