Challenge to Asbury election filed by A-Team candidate
Voided ballots in dispute could change results
A candidate on the losing A-Team slate has filed a lawsuit challenging the results of the Asbury Park City Council election on May 14.
The petition, filed Tuesday by Daniel Harris III, contests the voiding of 332 vote by mail [VBM] ballots and the failure to count 32 provisional ballots by the Monmouth County Board of Elections.
The suit also alleges that the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, in a search of the A-Team headquarters before the election, removed 115 applications for VBM ballots and failed to turn them over to the “appropriate location” so those voters would receive ballots. The suit alleges that those voters never received VBM ballots and were disenfranchised.
A spokesman for the Prosecutor’s Office had previously told the Sun the office would not comment on a pending investigation, nor would it confirm or deny an investigation relating to the A-Team. The Sun is awaiting a response from the Prosecutor’s office in regard to the allegations in Harris’s petition.
If counted, the number of ballots contested are enough to change the election results. Official winners are John Moor, Amy Quinn and Myra Campbell of the One Asbury ticket, and incumbents John Loffredo and Susan Henderson of the Forward Asbury ticket. They are scheduled to be sworn in to four year terms on July 1.
“It’s most important that everyone who has the right to vote has their vote counted,” Harris said. “It’s not about whether we win or lose, but that people have their vote counted.”
Attorney Fredric L. Bor, Cherry Hill, is representing Harris in the case. Bor did not return a phone message left this morning seeking comment.
The deadline to file the election challenge was on Thursday, according to the website of the New Jersey Secretary of State’s office.
Harris’s petition requests a trial and the production of an alphabetical list of voters who applied for VBM ballots. The requested list would delineate when the VBM ballot was mailed to a voter, when the ballot was received back in the county clerk’s office, whether the ballot was counted and, if not, the reasons for the failure to count the ballot.
The petition also requests that “the correct vote count” not only be applied to Harris, but also to his A-Team running mates Duanne Small, Jim Keady, Nora Hyland and Remond Palmer.
On the A-Team, the three highest vote getters were Keady with 447 votes, Small with 444 and Harris with 430. The three lowest winning candidates were incumbent Henderson with 620 votes, Campbell with 622 and incumbent Loffredo with 654.
That puts Keady and Small within 178 votes of winning two seats. Keady, Small and Harris would need to close a 225 vote margin to win a council majority.
The two other winners were John Moor with 723 votes and Amy Quinn with 716. Ousted incumbent Kevin Sanders remains in sixth place with 596 votes. Loffredo, Henderson and Sanders ran together on the Forward Asbury ticket.
Harris’s petition states that 230 of the 332 voided VBM ballots were rejected for reasons relating to disclosing who provided assistance on the application for the ballot. The petition challenges the statute cited for the voiding of 207 of those ballots as “not a legal justification for voiding a VBM ballot.”
The petition further challenges the voiding of these 230 ballots because the board did not disclose what “caused it to believe the voter had been assisted.”
The Petition also contests 19 VBM ballots that were voided for issues relating to the validity of signatures. In addition, the petition alleges that 47 VBM ballots voided on election day were not among the voided ballots listed in a subsequent Open Public Meeting Act request listing VBM ballots not counted.
Another ground for challenging the voiding of the 332 uncounted VBM ballots is that the “date, time and location of the counting of the VBM Ballots is not known and was not observable to the public,” the petition alleged.
In addition, Harris’s petition alleges that some voters received their VBM ballots after the election, citing as an example voter Ronald Davis, 66, who had requested a messenger to file a VBM application on his behalf. The petition alleges the postmark on the VBM ballot sent to David was dated two days after the election.
The use of ballot messengers by the A-Team has been controversial in the campaign. A voter may designate a messenger to pick up a VBM ballot at the election offices in Freehold and bring it to the voter. Such a messenger designation is made by the voter on the VBM ballot application.
The voter can then return the completed ballot by mail, or by designating the messenger or another person to take it back to Freehold for tabulation. A messenger may handle no more than 10 ballots.
Before the election, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office executed a search warrant at the A-Team headquarters in connection with an investigation of the messenger ballots. Keady previously told the Sun that the A-Team is fully cooperating with the investigation.
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