State officials are now mulling how to handle an issue in the 29th district, where an independent State Senate candidate left off the ballot in two Hudson County municipalities could prevent the Senate Majority Leader, Teresa Ruiz, from being certified as the winner.
Ruiz won 83% of the vote, but Labour Party candidate Pablo Olivera didn’t appear on the ballot in Harrison and East Newark. Now there’s a question of whether Ruiz, who was not at fault, can be seated when the Legislature reorganizes in January, or if a new election will need to be held even though she almost certainly would have won anyway.
“We’re still sorting through the situation,” Hudson County Clerk Junior Maldonado told the New Jersey Globe. “It’s status quo.”
The deadline for the state Board of Canvassers to certify the election results is December 7.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco said he will wait to see what guidance comes from the attorney general’s office before he takes a position on Ruiz’s certification.
Legislative redistricting added two Hudson County municipalities, Harrison and East Newark, into the Newark-based 29th district. It’s the first time Essex and Hudson shared a legislative district in over 40 years.
In 2020, a Superior Court Judge determined that the apparent winner of a race for Atlantic County Freeholder, Thelma Witherspoon, could not take her seat after finding the county clerk mailed the wrong ballots to enough voters to affect the race’s outcome. The courts refused to allow Democrats to fill the seat on an interim basis and ordered it to remain vacant until a do-over election for the entire race in November 2021; the political environment had changed enough for Andrew Parker, a Republican, to win the seat.
The appellate division upheld that decision.
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October 28, 2021 -
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