Total VBM ballots cast approaching 400,000

New Jerseyans have returned 41% of all vote-by-mail ballots issued with one week left before Election Day.

A total of 390,842 voters have had their VBM ballots marked as returned by election officials.

County clerks have issued 951,782 mail-in ballots – an increase of 5,633 from the previous day.  That leaves 560,940 vote-by-mail ballots for voters who automatically receive them at their homes still unreturned.

Six percent of all registered voters have now voted using mail-in ballots.   The current tally represents 17.8% of all votes in the 2017 general election have already been cast.

New Jersey has 6,561,568 registered voters, but that tally does not include new voter registrations that came in before the October 12 deadline.  There were 2,198,362 votes cast four years ago.

New Jersey’s voter registration gives Democrats a 39.3%-22.9% voter registration edge over Republicans.  Unaffiliated voters represent 36.5% of the total statewide electorate.

Early voting in New Jersey stared on October 23 and extends through October 31.  These numbers do not include early voting tallies.

According to an analysis by the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University, Democrats have cast 62.75% of all early votes so far, with 21.12% coming from Republicans and 15.8% from unaffiliated voters.

Mail-in ballots can be sent through the U.S. Postal Service – although some election officials strongly recommend against that – and can be deposited in secure ballot drop boxes across the state.  Click HERE for a list of drop box locations.

Voters can track their own vote-by-mail ballots.  Click HERE to sign in to your Track My Ballot account or click HERE to sign up.

Nine days of early voting began on October 23.  Click HERE for a list of early voting locations.

This story was updated at 2:19 PM and at 3:22 PM.