A superior court judge ruled that 1,909 mail-in ballots will be included as part of the vote total in the Democratic and Republican Primary for the 2nd Congressional District.
The Board of Elections held a Zoom meeting Friday afternoon to count the ballots.
The results will be posted via the county's official election results page, according to the Atlantic County Board of Elections.
The Board of Elections opened the mail-in ballots prematurely before the primary, raising questions on whether the law was broken and whether they should be counted, attorneys argued Friday.
Political newcomer Joseph Salerno had 12,637 votes to 12,236 for Tim Alexander late Tuesday night, representing 95 percent of the votes counted. Whoever the winner is after the mail-ins are counted, will face three-term Congressman Jeff Van Drew who ran unopposed.
The focus turned to 1,909 mail-in ballots.
Two workers from the Atlantic County Board of Elections testified about how the votes were handled.
A machine that timestamps the ballots also has the option of slicing them open, according to the Atlantic County Board of Elections. The ballots were not removed from their envelopes.
Superior Court Judge Michael Blee ruled Friday at the Civil Court hearing in Atlantic City that — while the mail-in ballots were opened earlier than the legally allowed five days prior to the primary — there was nothing that suggests anything more than being “sloppy.”
“The court has listened to the testimony very carefully. What happened with the election was sloppy, and no one disputes that,” Blee explained. “But nothing suggests the ballots were tampered with. The sole deficiency was unsealing them.”
The ballots were unsealed to find out the date of the ballots and then put through a machine, lawyers explained.
“Unfortunately, they were sliced from the machine. It was an inadvertent error. Now, it can be corrected simply,” Blee said of counting them. “For all of those reasons, the court enters this order, 1,909 disputed mail-in ballots to be accepted, if otherwise valid.”
Blee further emphasized that the Board of Elections now will have to recount them.
Atlantic County Democratic Chairman Michael Suleiman gave a statement about the matter saying it was "an unfortunate mistake" that Republican County Chairman Don Purdy tried to use “in a desperate attempt to sully mail-in voting.”
He focused his remarks on Purdy and his two board commissioners saying they “tried to disenfranchise over 700 Republicans and 1,100 Democrats for an unfortunate mistake that voters did not make.”
He said in his eight years as county chairman, “we’ve consistently fought to protect voting rights for all voters, including Republicans,” he said. “Judge Blee made the right decision by counting these ballots and making sure people’s voices are heard.”
The 2nd Congressional District encompasses a vast swath of territory in the southern part of the state, including all or parts of six counties and 93 towns.
Alexander, of Galloway Township, is a lawyer and a retired captain in the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. Salerno, of North Cape May, is a former engineer, machinist and software developer.
The lawyers in the case were Elliott Almanza, Steven Gleeson and Kenneth Warren.
