Nearly 2,000 Uncounted July Ballots From New Jersey Primary Found in Bin

A woman wearing gloves drops off a mail-in ballot at a drop box in Hackensack, N.J., on July 7, 2020. Seth Wenig/AP Photo

More than 1,600 ballots from New Jersey’s July primary election were found by Sussex County elections board officials in a “mislabeled” bin.

Board of Elections Administrator Marge McCabe said in a statement Monday that the 1,666 ballots cast in the July 7 primary were found on Sept. 10 in the bin that was stored at the county elections board office’s “secure area.”

The misplaced ballots were counted and certified by the Sussex County Clerk’s office once the state attorney’s general office was notified of the matter, the New Jersey Herald reported.

“The Board of Elections is confident that all ballots received have been processed and the security of all the ballots has remained in place,” McCabe said in her statement, noting that the newly tallied votes “did not change the outcome of any Sussex County primary election in any race for any office, Republican or Democrat.”

A majority of Sussex County residents chose to vote by mail due to health concerns amid the ongoing CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic. The county election board temporarily relocated to Sussex County Community College to count the votes while social distancing.

It was not clear how the ballots were placed in the mislabeled bin.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Board of Elections for further comment and clarification on the matter.

According to an analysis by the New Jersey Herald, more than 28,062 mail-in ballots and a further 2,126 provisional ballots were cast during July’s primary.

Mail-In Ballot Concerns

President Donald Trump earlier this month raised concerns over the viability of universal mail-in ballots ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Trump’s reelection campaign has sued to prevent the use of drop boxes in the Pennsylvania over voting fraud concerns.

During a packed rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 3, the president called on voters to go to the polls in person after mailing in their ballot to check that their vote has been counted. He appeared to hint that mail-in votes are susceptible to being thwarted or manipulated.

“Sign your mail in ballots, okay. You sign it, send it in, and you have to follow it,” Trump said at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport, the venue for the rally.

He continued: “And if on election day or early voting that [vote] is not tabulated and counted, you go vote. And then if for some reason after that—it shouldn’t take that long—it [the mailed vote] comes in, they’re not going to be able to tabulate it because you will have [already] voted.

“You have to make sure your vote counts, because the only way they’re going to beat us is by doing that kind of stuff. I’m trying to be nice,” Trump said.

Mimi Nguyen Ly and The Associated Press contributed to this report.