Board won’t give reasons for voiding 320 Asbury ballots
Number is enough to change city council election results
The Monmouth County Board of Elections last week voided 320 vote by mail ballots in Asbury Park — enough to change the city council election results — but the board has not specified the reasons.
“They said they’re not required to give it out. It’s private information. It’s been voided so you don’t need the names,” said attorney Eric Brophy, who represents the Forward Asbury slate of council candidates.
Brophy spoke to board of elections personnel on Friday, he said.
Board of elections administrator Robin Major, when asked by the Sun on Thursday, also declined to specify the reasons the board voided vote by mail [VBM] ballots from Asbury Park. Nor was any reason given by the four members of the Board of Elections during proceedings Friday afternoon to count provisional ballots and some VBM ballots from the city.
Attempts by the Sun last week to reach three of the four members of the board for an explanation also were unsuccessful as messages left were not returned. The Board of Elections reports to the New Jersey Secretary of State with legal counsel provided by the Attorney General’s office. Spokesmen for both departments declined comment and referred questions about the voided Asbury ballots back to the Board of Elections.
The losing A-Team slate of candidates plan legal action to get the 320 voided ballots counted. Their attorney — Monmouth County Republican Chairman John Bennett — filed an Open Public Records Act request with the Board of Elections on Friday for all documents concerning why the ballots were voided, according to A-Team candidate Duanne Small.
That information is expected to be provided on Monday or Tuesday, Small said. The A-Team has until May 29 to file for a recount, and until June 13 to file a challenge to the election results, according to the website of the Division of Elections in the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Office. The new city council is scheduled to be sworn in on July 1.
On Friday, the Board of Elections declared the official results from the May 14 election. The A-Teams’s Jim Keady is within 173 votes of fifth-place winner Susan Henderson. Small is within 176 votes of Henderson. Fourth-place winner Myra Campbell is an additional two votes away.
On the A-Team, the three highest vote getters were Keady with 447 votes, Small with 444 and Daniel Harris with 430. The three lowest winning candidates were incumbent Henderson with 620 votes, Campbell with 622 and incumbent John Loffredo with 654.
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. Moor, Quinn and Campbell ran on the One Asbury ticket. Loffredo, Henderson and Sanders ran on the Forward Asbury ticket.
There is some unofficial information regarding the basis for the voiding of the 320 VBM ballots.
The Forward Asbury ticket filed challenges to 275 VBM ballots on election day, according to Brophy, the attorney for Forward Asbury. In a conversation after the election, Superintendent of Elections Hedra Siskel told Brophy that approximately 250 of the 275 challenged ballots were voided by the board of elections, Brophy said. [Siskel’s office is separate from the Board of Elections, but provides the board with information to help decide whether to count a ballot.]
There were two primary reasons Forward Asbury challenged those 275 VBM ballots, Brophy said. Ballots were challenged from voters who allegedly did not reside at the address they claimed. Also challenged were ballots delivered by messengers, when the messenger did not sign an affidavit required by the county clerk. The affidavit stated that the messenger complied with applicable legal requirements, and that the messenger understands violating the law governing VBM ballots is a crime.
Brophy was unable to state how many ballots were challenged because of the messenger issue, and how many on residency grounds.
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. 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.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office executed a search warrant earlier this month 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. All the other campaigns denied the use of ballot messengers.
A total of 42 messengers collected 336 ballots for voters, according to records in the election offices. As of the Friday before election day, about 275 of those ballots had been returned for tabulation. An additional 50 VBM ballots arrived after that, according to the county election offices.
As of the Friday before election day, 25 of the 42 messengers had not returned the affidavits required by the clerk and sent out by certified mail on April 17 — one of the basis for the Forward Asbury challenge to the ballots.
Forward Asbury decided to challenge the messenger ballots because of the controversy surrounding their use, culminating in the search of the A-Team headquarters, Brophy said.
“The integrity of the entire election was in the balance regardless of who the winners would be,” he said.
But the A-Team slate sees the 320 voided ballots as disenfranchisement of voters.
“We are going to try to get them opened to ensure that every voter in Asbury Park has their constitutional right to vote protected and no one in Asbury Park is disenfranchised,” said Keady on Friday in regard to the group’s planned legal action.
The One Asbury slate challenged 34 VBM ballots on election day, campaign manager Meredith DeMarco confirmed. The challenges were made because the ticket believed that the voters did not reside at the address they claimed, she said.
All five council seats were contested at the May 14 election, and twenty two candidates were on the ballot. The term of office is four years.
The following are the official election results as declared by the Monmouth County Board of Elections:
| Councilmembers-At-Large Asbury Park City |
| 9/9 100.00% |
| Vote Count | Percent | |
| – Susan Henderson | 620 | 6.96% |
| – John M. Loffredo | 654 | 7.34% |
| – Kevin Sanders | 596 | 6.69% |
| – Gregory Hopson, Sr. | 438 | 4.92% |
| – William D. Potter | 448 | 5.03% |
| – Amy Quinn | 716 | 8.04% |
| – Myra L. Campbell | 622 | 6.98% |
| – Joe Woerner | 584 | 6.56% |
| – John B. Moor | 723 | 8.12% |
| – Talesha A. Crank | 459 | 5.15% |
| – Randy Thompson | 143 | 1.61% |
| – Harold V. Suggs | 48 | 0.54% |
| – Remond Palmer | 419 | 4.71% |
| – Duanne ‘King’ Small | 444 | 4.99% |
| – Nora Hyland | 389 | 4.37% |
| – Daniel Harris | 430 | 4.83% |
| – James Keady | 447 | 5.02% |
| – Rosetta ‘Ella’ Johnson | 179 | 2.01% |
| – Stephen ‘Steve’ Williams | 163 | 1.83% |
| – Clevette ‘Rasul’ Hill | 126 | 1.41% |
| – Shonna ‘Walker’ Famularo | 138 | 1.55% |
| – Dorvil ‘Gregory’ Gilles | 110 | 1.24% |
| Write-In | 9 | 0.10% |
| Total | 8,905 | 100.00% |
