Above – The Asbury Together ticket from their Facebook page.
The Asbury Together team has submitted over 300 challenge forms to Vote By Mail (VBM) applications that team members believe have been filled out improperly by campaign workers acting as “assistors” and “messengers” to voters.
In a statement released by the team, which includes John Moor for mayor and Amy Quinn, Joe Woerner, Jesse Kendle and Barbara Clayton for council, the candidates said election law allows voters applying for VBM ballots an “assistor” in completing the application and a “messenger” to bring the application to Freehold and carry a ballot back to the voter. The same law specifically requires that anybody giving assistance on the application be fully and properly disclosed, the statement said.
The Asbury Together team believes there are multiple problem with the applications including multiple handwritings but lack of assister information, multiple handwritings indicating additional assistors but no information on the other assistor or assistors provided, voter signatures not matching, dates of voter and assistor signatures not matching.
With hundreds of ballots getting handled by messengers partial to a specific campaign, proper procedure is key to ensuring integrity of the election process, said the Asbury Together team.
The Asbury Together team first raised this issue to Monmouth County Clerk Claire French in a personal meeting on Wednesday October 15. The team followed up the meeting with numerous calls to the County Clerk’s office and a letter dated October 20, 2014 outlining their concerns.
“We raised our concerns early hoping the Clerk’s office would examine the vote by mail applications and, if proper procedure was not followed, create a contingency plan to ensure all Asbury Park voters can cast a vote in the November 4th election. We are still hopeful the County Clerk’s office and Board of Elections can make a speedy determination so that every voter has the opportunity to vote in the upcoming election,” the Asbury Together candidates said their statement released Oct. 30.
