Mayor Fried Statement re: Letter to Disenfranchised Voters

December 22, 2022


“It came to our attention this week that an undisclosed number of residents across Mercer County, including many from Robbinsville Township, received letters from the Mercer County Board of Elections (BOE) stating:

“This office is in receipt of your provisional ballot for the General Election on November 8^th, 2022. Unfortunately, your provisional ballot was not counted for the following reason: Voted by Machine.”

From what we have been able to ascertain, the vast majority of these letters were sent to voters who signed in at their polling station with the intention of voting on the machine but were given a provisional ballot because the machine scanners were not processing Mercer County ballots due to a coding error. The directive to complete a provisional ballot was given to our Municipal Clerk from someone at the Office of the Superintendent of Elections and passed on to poll workers on Election Day. However, it appears signing the book in the eyes of the BOE constituted a machine vote, even though no vote was actually cast on the machine, only via provisional. As a result, those votes, and we don’t have any idea right now how many, were disqualified and those voters were unmistakably disenfranchised. Most of those discounted ballots appear to have been cast within the first two hours of the polls opening at 6 a.m.

Mercer County Superintendent of Elections Nathaniel Walker confirmed in an email to our clerk’s office this morning that “because the November 8 General Election has been Closed-Out and candidates are certified, the BOE actions are irreversible.”

We believe even one uncounted vote is too many, let alone hundreds. Robbinsville has been among the most vocal critics of the 2022 General Election in Mercer County and has called for a complete overhaul of the process. Brian M. Hughes, the Mercer County Executive, has done the same. However, it is patently false for anyone at County to state that every vote was counted. We now know that is, sadly, not true.

The letter to those disenfranchised residents closes with “if you have any questions, you may contact this office at the above number listed.”

That number is (609) 989-6522, and the email address is BoardofElections@mercercounty.org.

We have repeatedly expressed our dismay with the unfortunate events surrounding the 2022 General Election, and we will not stop until fundamental changes are made to our election systems in Mercer County.”