An error was made on some mail-in ballots sent to voters in Hamilton Township in Mercer County, and it remains unclear how it may impact a local race in the 2020 general election.
County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello said it was brought to her attention several weeks ago that the Spanish language instructions on some mail-in ballots incorrectly told voters to select all three candidates running to fill one unexpired term on the Hamilton Township Council. The instructions to select just one candidate among the three running were correct in English.
After learning about the error from a mail-in voter, Sollami Covello said she immediately shredded the incorrect mail-in ballots that had not yet been sent to voters, and the printer producing them corrected future ballots that were mailed out.
The error was isolated to the mail-in ballots alone, she added, although the office does not know how many ballots with the error were sent to voters.
“As soon as we were advised of it, we changed everything," the county clerk said. "It wasn’t on provisionals, it wasn’t on machines, it wasn’t on anything else.”
Sollami Covello said she did not send updated mail-in ballots to those who had received ones containing the mistake.
“I know this has happened in many other counties, and several times in many other counties, where they make major mistakes, so I followed the protocol of what other clerks had done," Sollami Covello said.
Only one voter contacted her about the error, she said. Sollami Covello believes the mistake did not impact the outcome of the council election in Hamilton Township.
“It’s a bilingual district. And most people can read the English, and if they could not it generally breaks toward the Democrat in the bilingual districts, based on the historical turnout of the elections," Sollami Covello said. “If it had been a fatal, major change, where it was both English and Spanish, we may have considered some other course.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, Democratic candidate Charles F. ‘Chuddy’ Whalen led in the unofficial election results with 23,017 votes, or 54.08% of the vote. Republican candidate David Maher had 16,760 votes and independent candidate Edward C. Stackhouse had received 2,756.
Mary Corrigan, secretary for the county’s Board of Elections, said she was not aware of the error on the ballot. If a voter mistakenly voted for three candidates instead of one in the council election, their vote in that particular election would be invalidated as an overvote, she said.
So far, it is unknown how many ballots were impacted, Corrigan said.
“We’re still working on adjudication, so we wouldn’t know how many overvotes until after all the adjudication is done,” Corrigan said.
When asked when the adjudication will be complete, Corrigan said, “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. We have 6,000 more to go."
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Caroline Fassett may be reached at cfassett@njadvancemedia.com
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N.J. county sent out erroneous mail-in ballots, and is not certain of its impact on local race - NJ.com
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