More votes expected today in Livingston, where race is too close to call

Two Livingston council candidates are three votes apart, with hundreds of ballots still left to be counted from Tuesday’s Democratic primary election.

Laurie Kahn leads Deputy Mayor Ketan Bhuptani, 1,631 to 1,628, in a tight contest for the third slot on the Democratic council ticket.

There are 152 vote-by-mail ballots that still need to be counted, along with 116 provisional ballots. In New Jersey, provisional ballots are not automatically counted. They are only counted after election officials determine that the voter was eligible to vote and that the ballot was cast properly under state law.

Additionally, one of the township’s 26 voting districts is not yet included in the total count.  Last year, Livingston’s 15th district cast a total of 119 votes in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.  Early votes and VBM ballots in that district mirror the current townwide total: Kahn leads Bhuptani by three votes, 18-15.

Livingston also has twelve vote-by-mail ballots with technical deficiencies.  Those voters were mailed a cure letter, which allowed them to correct the defect.  As of Thursday afternoon, all twelve voters had fixed their ballot issues.

Vote-by-mail ballots postmarked by 8 PM on June 2 will be counted if they are delivered to the Board of Elections by close of business on Monday.

The Essex County Board of Elections is expected to count more votes today, but provisional ballots likely won’t be counted until early next week.

Kahn appears to have a slight advantage over Bhuptani; so far, she leads Bhuptani, 682-423, a 61.7% to 38.3% margin, among VBM voters.  Bhuptani likely needs to increase his VBM percentage to over 51%.

But Bhuptani has a significant lead over Kahn among in-person Election Day voters, 1,051 to 805, 56.6% to 43.4%.  Provisional ballots typically reflect the trend among Election Day voters; if all 116 are counted – they hardly ever are – that could give Bhuptani a boost of roughly +15.

Three-term incumbent Edward Meinhardt was the top vote-getter with 1,838 votes, and Stacey Abenstein, with 1,729, secured the Democratic nomination for the second seat.  Those totals are enough to withstand even a significant shift in the remaining uncounted ballots.

Abenstein, a Democratic state committeewoman and former chief of staff to State Sen. Renee Burgess (D-Irvington), and Kahn, a zoning board member for the last seven years, ran as a team; they had the endorsement of Essex County Commissioner and Democratic Municipal Chair Pat Sebold and Assemblywoman Rosie Bagolie (D-Livingston).  Meinhardt and Bhuptani ran together.  All four candidates used the organization slogan.

Two other candidates, Bill Lam (1,255) and Daphne Dan Wang (1,214), were unsuccessful.

Mayor Shawn Klein did not seek re-election to a fourth term.

Timothy Foley is the lone Republican candidate for the three seats.  Republicans have not won a local race in Livingston since 2010.