Paraguayan Election Runs Smoothly in Bernardsville

The Bedminster location of the world's first Paraguayan election open to Paraguayan citizens living in the U.S. and some other foreign citizens ran smoothly on Sunday, said Bernardsville Police Chief Kevin Valentine.

Voting was steady throughout the day and there appeared to be a good turnout at the Bernardsville train station, Valentine said. He said that the final voter numbers were not provided to the borough as of the early part of Tuesday.

"It appeared that a significant number of people turned out to vote who were not registered and they were not allowed to cast a ballot in this election," the chief said. However, he added there were no problems as a result of that issue.
 
"The election committee did a good job in running the election and cooperated with the police in every way," Valentine said. No violations were reported, he said.

He said police had provided supervision as per a pre-existing agreement before the election. He said he himself had stopped in to check on the election, which was scheduled for 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 21.

Two Bernardsville offciers were provided for security at the election committee's expense, paid up front by the election committee, he said. The Somerset County Sheriff and New Jersey Transit police provided extra security to to ensure protection of the NJT train station. The balloting location was in a vacant part of the train station off Route 202.

Local representatives for both the Liberal and Conservative Paraguayan candidate had approached the Bernardsville Borough Council last week to request use of the train station as a polling place.

The candidate for the more conservative, center-right Colorado Party, businessman Horacio Cartes, prevailed in the election, according to a report from Reuters. The Bernardsville organizers of the election said that international voting also was allowed in this election by Paraguayan citizens living in Argentina and Spain.