Atlantic County Board of Elections increases early voting sites to 6 | Government & Politics | pressofatlanticcity.com
The Atlantic County Board of Elections agreed Friday night to set up six early voting sites for the November election, rather than the five required by state law, to give voters in the geographically large western part of the county an additional location.
The decision avoided the need to settle a disagreement over where the early voting site should be located in the 5th District — Hammonton or Buena Vista Township.
Democrats had wanted to put it in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in the Newtonville section of Buena Vista, and Republicans wanted to put it in the county is Family Center in downtown Hammonton.
Now an early voting site will be in each.
“The 5th is the largest district in Atlantic County, with over one-third of the (land) area,” said Democratic board member John Mooney. “It’s the largest district, not in voting population but area-wise.”
The Atlantic County Board of Elections agreed at a meeting Tuesday night on four of the five…
So Mooney agreed it was important to have a site there as well as at the more centrally located Buena Vista. It will be in the county’s Hammonton Family Success Center at 310 Bellevue Ave.
Atlantic County, with about 203,000 registered voters, must have at least five early voting sites but can be reimbursed by the state for the machines to equip up to seven sites, said Chair Lynn Caterson.
Caterson thanked Democratic commissioner Audrey Hart, whom she called “key in making that addition happen.”
At its last meeting, the board split over where the 5th District site should be, and it looked like the county clerk would have to decide the matter until the board came to an agreement to use both locations.
Early voting for the Nov. 2 general election will now be available Oct. 23 to 31 at the Atlantic City Free Public Library, in District 1; the county’s Shoreview Building on Shore Road in Northfield in District 2; the Atlantic County Library branch in Mays Landing in District 3; the library branch in Galloway Township in District 4; and at the Martin Luther King Center in Buena Vista Township and the Hammonton Family Success Center in Hammonton in District 5.
Do you want to participate in the state’s first foray into early, in-person voting by new ma…
Any Atlantic County voter can vote in any of the locations, as electronic poll books will be able to call up any registered voter’s information and special software will allow any local ballot to be voted on in special machines.
Clerks of the Board, Democrat Bill Sacchinelli and Republican Brenda Taube, said applications are on the board’s website for poll workers for both the early voting sites and the much more numerous Election Day sites.
“We’ve been receiving a lot of applications for both early and Election Day,” Taube said.
The board then adjourned to start a new meeting to continue the recount in the at-large county commissioner race between incumbent Republican John Risley and Democrat Celeste Fernandez.
The two were separated by just 0.03% of the votes cast, and Fernandez won the right to a full recount, which started Tuesday night and will continue next week.
Caterson said the Attorney General’s Office has advised her not to release any preliminary vote counts but to wait until the recount is complete before releasing preliminary vote counts but to wait until the recount is complete before releasing numbers.
REPORTER: Michelle Brunetti Post 609-272-7210
