Some Votes Double Counted In NJ 2022 Election, State Report Finds

MONMOUTH COUNTY - A state investigation into the November 2022 general election in Monmouth County found that a lack of safeguards, including those to prevent double-counting votes, prompted a miscount snafu in four municipalities.

According to the findings of the state probe, some votes were counted twice, which led to recounts — but not before the wrong candidate was declared the winner in an Ocean Township Board of Education race. Read more: Voting Machine Software Error Made In Ocean Twp. School Board Race

The state investigation, led by former attorney general Peter Harvey, was launched in January following allegations regarding the vote tabulations in Monmouth County, according to the state attorney general’s office. The report, as well as Harvey’s recommendations on how to improve the system in the future, were released Wednesday.

The state is "reviewing them carefully as we work to ensure free and fair elections in New Jersey,” Attorney General Matt Platkin said in a statement.

“I am proud that our elections in New Jersey are safe and secure, and we are committed to ensuring that remains the case," Platkin said.

"Several factors” contributed to the miscount, including a lack of software designed to prevent double-counting, the report said. Amid network connectivity issues discovered in July 2022, Monmouth County’s voting equipment vendor, ES&S, sent a customer relations manager with no software or hardware technical experience to un- and re-install election software on the county’s election server. The state investigation revealed the manager did not install a software patch designed to prevent duplication of ballot data when re-installing the software.

“When county personnel loaded flash drives with ballot images into election workstations on Election Night and the day after the election—a process designed to facilitate the manual tabulation of write-in votes—they loaded some flash drives twice,” the state report reads. “If the [software] had been installed, the ballots on those flash drives would not have been counted more than once.”

As a result of the software reinstallation error, recounts were implemented in Belmar, Fair Haven and Tinton Falls, in addition to the Ocean Township school board race. Read more: Fair Haven Among Towns With Vote Count Errors In Last Election

The double-counted votes were not identified in any reports on the election software before the county certified the election, officials said. No evidence found during the investigation suggested fraudulent conduct by Monmouth County officials, personnel or vendors, or was evidence of double-counting ballots found before or after the Monmouth County 2022 general election, the state said.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting the right to vote and to ensuring that our elections in New Jersey remain safe and secure,” Sundeep Iyer, Director of the AG's Division on Civil Rights, said in a statement.