Politics & Government

Elections Superintendent Wants District 13 Cartridge

Camden County will petition the Superior Court to access a total of four voting machines sometime next week.

The Camden County elections superintendent will petition the Superior Court for access to data cartridges in four impounded voting machines, including one from a Gloucester Township polling place.

The request, if approved, would allow for the certification of the Gloucester Township Council election, in which Democrats won all four seats, roughly a week earlier than it likely would take without a court order.

On Wednesday, Superintendent of Elections Phyllis Pearl indicated there were four polling districts in Camden County, including Gloucester Township's District 13, from which votes were not counted toward the county's unofficial election tallies due to issues with voting machines.

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

A machine sent to the District 13 polling place at Stetser-Lamartine American Legion Post 281, in the township's Chews Landing section, for the election produced an alert that its battery was low as poll workers prepared to open up for voters Tuesday morning, according to county officials. The machine was put aside before any voters used it, and was replaced within an hour.

Pearl not only expects little to come from the still-outstanding Gloucester Township District 13, Pennsauken District 21, Somerdale District 3 and Haddonfield District 1 cartridges—she expects nothing to come from them.

Find out what's happening in Gloucester Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I know that cartridge is going to say 'zero,'" she said Thursday morning.

Still, officials with the Camden County Board of Elections and Clerk's Office cannot certify election results for local, county and state elections until the four districts' votes are counted, Pearl noted, and that cannot be done until the four cartridges are read.

Pearl noted that two Gloucester Township districts' votes were added to the official Camden County website's election results page Thursday morning. The cartridges from those districts were not "read" Tuesday night, Pearl said, but by then the election had already been called for the Democrats.

All candidates involved in races where the cartridges remain in impounded voting machines will be notified of the county's petition and would be given the opportunity to witness the cartridges being pulled.

In New Jersey, all voting machines are locked and impounded for a 15-day period, which commences when polls close, to allow for recount petitions.

In addition to the four districts' votes, county workers will add absentee and provisional ballot votes to the previously reported unofficial tallies to arrive at official counts for local, county and state elections.

Camden County spokeswoman Joyce Gabriel noted Wednesday that the voting-machine issue at the four polling districts "doesn't affect the outcome of the election."

In the Gloucester Township Council race, the four Democrats won by a wide margin, with the closest Republican finishing more than 1,600 votes behind the fourth-place Democrat, according to unofficial results.


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