WEST ORANGE, N.J.--In an WEST ORANGE, N.J.--In an earlier post, I reported the mayor of Jersey City complaining that he was having trouble "getting our votes counted." Apparently, there were problems statewide with voters gaining access to the polls, according to the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU-NJ), which reported that Hudson County, of which Jersey City is the county seat, was a special case. Even Gov. Jon Corzine was unable to vote at his Hudson County polling place in Hoboken because of problems with the voting machines, according to ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs, and was not offered a provisional ballot, as required by the state's election law. Instead, Jacobs wrote in a press release, Corzine was sent to another polling place. "When both advocates and members of the press called the Hudson County Superintendent of Elections to ask about Gov. Corzine's experience," according to the press release, "staff members hung up on them." The ACLU-NJ conducted, in partnership with the League of Women Voters (LWF), a voter hotline that received "numerous complaints," according to the release, which did not quantify the complaints. In addition to situations such as that faced by Corzine, problems alleged by the state ACLU include "difficulty physically accessing voting site" and "numerous people registered as Democrats but listed in the statewide database as Republicans and prohibited from voting as Democrats." Anticipating problems at polling places, the two organizations had planned a voter protection effort that involved handing out, at polling stations, cards that list a voter's rights. As Super Tuesday polling got under way, ACLU-NJ and the LWV were in court challenging an order by state Attorney General Anne Milgram that the cards not be distributed within 100 feet of a polling station. There is, at present, no evidence that the irregularities alleged by the ACLU-NJ would have altered the outcome of the state primary -- which Hillary Clinton won with 54 percent of the vote -- or that those allegations bear any relation to the problems that Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healy was having getting turnout numbers and results from Hudson County election officials. Before he took the stage, I spoke briefly with Healy, who said the turnout in Jersey City, where most voters are Democrats and 28 percent of the population is black, had been "huge." And a huge turnout certainly could make for a slow count. But he just couldn't get the numbers. --Adele M. Stan
