Wow! County to send "almost 250,000 absentee ballots" for July 7 Primary

Watch "July Primary 2020: All Your Questions Answered" at https://www.facebook.com/HobokenDems/videos/640852433167458/

Thank you to Rachel Hodes, Hoboken Democratic Committee Chair, Michael Harper, Hudson County Board of Elections Clerk, and Jerry Lore, Deputy Clerk of the City of Hoboken, for today's most informative webinar, "July Primary 2020: All Your Questions Answered."  It's only about 26 minutes long and worth watching.

For those who haven't been following (like me, me, me) we will all be voting absentee ballot in the July Primary.  On May 15, NJ Governor Phil Murphy signed an Executive Order to:

"create a modified vote-by-mail election for the July 7th Primary. The order requires that each county’s elections officials send vote-by-mail ballots to all registered Democratic and Republican voters and send VBM ballot applications to unaffiliated and inactive voters. All VBM ballots and VBM ballot applications will come with pre-paid postage". 

What about machine voting?

"The order also requires opening a minimum of at least one polling place in each municipality, and provided that there are enough poll workers, a minimum of 50 percent of polling places in each county to provide New Jersey voters who may need access to in-person voting opportunities. Polling locations will be required to follow public health standards including ensuring six feet of distance, requiring poll workers to wear face coverings and gloves, frequent sanitization of high-touch areas, and providing sanitization materials to all individuals at a polling place."  

And so, in today's webinar, Michael Harper said that every registered Democrat and registered  Republican in Hudson County would soon be receiving an absentee ballot for early voting.

Harper gave perspective on the unprecedented nature and number of absentee ballots the County is mailing out now.  He said that the highest number of absentee votes received by the County to-date was in 2012, after Superstorm Sandy. That year, Harper said, vbms "skyrocketed... just under 20,000 absentee votes-19.8K or 19.9K were returned that year." 

And now? 

"This year the County Clerk is sending out almost 250,000 absentee ballots... we could easily double or triple that return."

For perspective on that, Harper said that for the Presidential Primary in 2016, Hudson County turned out 80K-85K (total) votes.

It will be really interesting to see how many absentee ballots are returned for this Primary.  Less than will be returned for the presidential election, but we'll still an idea of absentee participation. 

#BlueWave2020