The filing deadline to run in the special primary election to fill the unexpired term of the late Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. (D-Newark) in New Jersey’s 10th district is coming up on Friday, May 10 at 4 PM, one week after Gov. Murphy issued a write of a special primary on Tuesday, July 16.
The free-standing special congressional election – the first in New Jersey since February 1950 – comes with a new series of deadlines.
Candidates will have until 4 PM on Monday, May 13 to amend their petitions for technical defects; no additional signatures may be added.
The deadline to challenge petitions is Tuesday, May 14 at 4 PM. Staff at the state Division of Elections is typically responsive to requests for petitions, frequently working weekends when necessary. Petitions will be scanned as they come in.
In the event of a petition challenge, administrative law judges would likely schedule a hearing on Wednesday, May 15 to determine the validity of the challenge. The final decision rests with Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way, the Secretary of State.
There are built-in inequities in the petition challenge process since there are no public terminals for people to the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS). The system of ballot challenges strongly favors candidates who have access to voter registration data through political party insiders.
County clerks in Essex, Union, and Hudson will conduct ballot draws on Monday, May 20 to determine the order candidates are listed.
A ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi in March mandated office block ballots in the June 4 Democratic primary. Quraishi’s order doesn’t apply to the July special primary for Payne’s seat, but that doesn’t necessarily matter since Congress will be the lone office on the ballot; even with lines, a free-standing special election would not be impacted.
The county clerks must prepare the ballots by the next day, Tuesday, May 21; that won’t be hard, since Middlesex County isn’t in the 10th district, obviating the need for County Clerk Nancy Pinkin to be involved. The next day is the deadline to file a challenge to the nominating petitions in Superior Court.
The deadline to change party registration to vote in the July 16 primary is also on Wednesday, May 22; it’s also the last day for a candidate to drop out of the race and have their Committee on Vacancies replace them with a substitute candidate.
County clerks must commence mailing vote-by-mail ballots on June 1. That means they must begin to mail out some ballots, but there’s no requirement that all ballots must drop on the same day. Indeed, election officials are expected to mail military and overseas ballots on June 1, as required by federal law, but other mail-in ballots will likely be held until June 4 to avoid voter confusion with the regular primary election that day.
The deadline to register to vote for the July 16 primary is June 25. New Jersey election law mandates that county election offices be open late that evening for in-person voter registration; municipal clerks have the option of late office hours.
Challengers must be filed by July 2, and the deadline to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot is July 9. Sample ballots will go out on July 10.
In-person early voting will begin on Friday, July 12, and end on Sunday, July 14. It’s unclear how many early voting centers will be activated for the special primary.
Requests for in-person mail-in ballot applications must be made by July 15 at 3 PM.
Ballot drop box locations have also not yet been determined, although it’s likely that those available for the June 4 primary will be activated.
Post-Election Deadlines, and Congressional Write-In Trivia
Ballots postmarked by 8 PM on Tuesday, July 16, Election Day, will be counted as long as the U.S. Postal Service delivers them to county election offices by close of business on Monday, July 22; ballots without a postmark but still delivered by the post office must be received by July 16.
The deadline for VBM ballot cure letters to repair technical deficiencies is Wednesday, July 24.
The county clerks must certify the election results by Friday, July 26. Requests for recounts must be filed with the Superior Court by Monday, July 29.
In the unlikely event that a write-in candidate wins the primary, a certificate of acceptance must be filed by Tuesday, July 30.
The last time a House member won a general election as a write-in candidate was in 1982 when Ron Packard, won a San Diego/Orange County-based seat. Packard, the mayor of Carlsbad, lost the 17-candidate Republican primary by 92 votes to 33-year-old self-funder Johnnie Crean. Incensed by Crean’s campaign tactics, including a fake endorsement by President Ronald Reagan, Packard launched a write-in campaign; the Orange County GOP censured Crean for his dirty campaign. Packard won the general by a 37%-32% margin over Democrat Pat Archer; Crean received 31%.
In Alaska, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski lost the 2010 Republican primary to conservative Joe Miller and then won re-election as a write-in by a 51%-49% margin.
Harold Runnels, a popular five-term Democratic congressman from New Mexico, died after the 1980 primary election. A judge ordered a special primary to pick a new Democratic nominee but rejected a GOP primary because no Republican had filed to run against Runnells. Former State Sen. Joe Skeen, a Republican who was nearly elected governor twice, ran as a write-in candidate and won, 38%-34%, against David King, the governor’s nephew. The spoiler in that race was another Democrat who ran as a write-in: Dorothy Runnels, the congressman’s widow, received 28%.
One of the best write-in stories was in Boston in 1918 when John F. Fitzgerald, a former mayor and congressman – and the grandfather of John F. Kennedy — challenged two-term Rep. Peter Tague in the Democratic primary and won by 50 votes, Tague unsuccessfully challenged the election and then ran as a write-in; Fitzgerald beat him by 238 votes.
Claiming voter fraud and the illegal registration of Irish immigrants who were not U.S. citizens, Tague challenged the results and wound up winning by 525 votes.
Kennedy had been sworn in as the new congressman and held the seat for more than seven months until the House voted to unseat him and allow Tague to be sworn in.