No Clear Election Results In Sight For Morris County Races

MORRIS COUNTY, NJ - It has been days since the polls closed on Nov. 3 and the sporadic and incomplete election results have sewn confusion and frustration in Morris County and beyond, and Morris County Clerk Ann Grossi has a message for those anxiously refreshing their browser.

Be patient.

"Many residents and interested parties are under the misimpression that the Morris County Clerk’s Office is responsible for counting paper ballots and that complete results would be posted on the County Clerk’s on-line Election Night Reporting System on Nov. 3," Grossi said. "The acceptance, verification and counting of election results are under the sole jurisdiction of the County Board of Elections, which is a separate and independent agency from the County Clerk’s Office.”

The results are then provided to the County Clerk’s Office by the Board of Elections and there other rules in place this year due to the vote-by-mail mandate. For example, mail-in-ballots are still being received through Tuesday. And then, on Wednesday, the tallying of provisional ballots cast in-person on Election Day can commence.

Although many may have believed that the results posted on Election Night were complete, that is not the case. While complete results will occur, it will happen over a longer period of time, Grossi said, nothing that there are a number of reasons for the delay.

Such as:

• As per Governor Murphy’s Executive Order 177, the 2020 General Election is being conducted primarily through vote-by-mail and not on machine voting, which would have provided in immediate results on election night.
• Paper ballots must be hand opened, verified and prepared by Board of Election personnel for machine counting, which takes time.
• As per Governor Murphy’s Executive Order 177, the Board of Elections must accept ballots received by the Post Office until Nov. 10 provided that they are postmarked by Nov. 3.
• By Election Night, the Board of Elections received more than 200,000 vote by mail ballots, of which only 102,992 were counted and posted on the County Clerk’s Election Night Reporting System.
• In addition to the more than 100,000 ballots uncounted on Election Night, the contents of 56 drop boxes (40 located at polling locations and 16 located in various municipalities) located throughout Morris County were delivered to the Board of Elections for counting after 8 p.m.
• The Board of Elections must send Cure Letters to all voters whose ballots were set aside due to verification issues so that those voters are given an opportunity to “cure” any deficiency.
• After all of the vote by mail ballots are counted, then the Provisional Ballots cast at polling locations must be verified and counted.

The County Clerk’s Office will post the elections results on an ongoing basis as they are provided by the Board of Elections, Grossi said, but there is no regularly scheduled update planned.

Also lacking in the updates thus far is context, as voters have no idea what percentage of the tally for individual races is completed.

Below is Grossi's statement on video:

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