A 90-year-old Monmouth County woman will get to vote this year after a judge found that she had made a good-faith effort to register and could not rule out that there could have been a mistake at Motor Vehicles Commission when she changed the address on her driver’s license.
That allows a person who has been voting regularly since the mid-1950s not to be disenfranchised.
“I’ve been voting all my life,” the woman testified. “I’m 90 now, but I’ve been voting ever since I was able to vote, and I really would like to continue as long as I can.”
Today’s ruling underscores the importance of voters defending their right to vote by appearing before a judge to make their case.
The woman, whose name is being withheld by the New Jersey Globe, had upgraded her residency from New York to New Jersey last year in June 2023.
“I went with my daughter to the motor vehicle to get my license. We filled out the application. did a little check for the voting, and that’s about it,” the woman told Superior Court Judge Linda Grasso Jones.
She said her daughter changed her address and registered to vote simultaneously, and that registration went through.
Monmouth County Superintendent of Elections Christopher Siciliano and Jason Sena, an attorney for the Monmouth County GOP, each advocated for the woman’s right to vote.
“I think it seems clear to me that there was a mistake made on the part of the agency and not the voter, and that the voter should be able to cast a ballot her,” Sena said.
But Deputy Attorney General Egle Dykhne opposed the 90-year-old woman’s bid to vote, offering a certification from the Motor Vehicles Commission that the box on the computer screen was checked that “opted out of registering to vote or otherwise modifying their voter registration status.”
“MVC has no record of any prior or subsequent transactions involving the aforementioned voter that contradicts the information contained in this certification,” Dykhne told the judge. “She then certified the foregoing statements made by her were true, and she certified that if any of those statements were willfully false, she is subject to punishment.”
Sena opposed that.
“It’s the first time in ten years of volunteering on Election Day that I’ve seen the attorney general’s office procure a document to introduce into evidence that wasn’t already part of the record to oppose a voter application,” he said.
Siciliano, a former Democratic mayor of Ocean Township who once ran the same Eatontown motor vehicle center that the woman went to, told Grasso Jones that he understood how MVC system could have resulted in an error.
“There’s a lot of ambient noise,” Siciliano said. “With that ambient noise and sitting there with a 90-year-old applicant, and it would not surprise me that she did not hear the instruction or even perhaps check the wrong box. Our agents at the windows don’t necessarily see what box you check, just that you check a box. So, they have no position either, whether you register or not. Just that you had an action of yes or no.”
The judge found the woman’s testimony to be credible.
“Our position is always, if you’re eligible to vote, we absolutely want you to vote. We want everyone who is eligible to vote,” Grasso Jones said. “The applicant should be permitted to vote.”
Grasso Jones said the woman “did the stuff that she’s supposed to do.”
“The mistake could have been on the part of the applicant, but the mistake also could have been on the part of the Motor Vehicle Commission,” she said. “She certainly did it in a timely fashion.”
She added, “there’s no obligation for the applicant to have gone back to the DMV or to call (the) Motor Vehicles Commission and say, ‘Hey, did you get that paper work right?’”
Earlier today, an Ocean County resident will be unable to vote after missing the October 15 voter registration deadline. Judge Craig Wellerson’s hands were tied by a statute that sets a hard cut-off date.
Wellerson also denied an Ocean County man who had been registered to vote before a 2012 criminal conviction the chance to vote this year because he had never re-registered. That, too, left the judge without any options.
“Why are we turning away eligible voters? Year after year, New Jersey disenfranchises voters because of our arbitrary 21-day registration deadline,” said Henal Patel, the law and policy director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “It’s shameful and unnecessary. It is long past time for us to join the over 20 states that have same-day voter registration.”
If you are not allowed to vote or feel incorrectly pushed to vote on a provisional ballot when you’re entitled to vote on the machine, you can present your case to a Superior Court Judge to determine your eligibility to vote. Judges will be on call for each of the nine days of early voting; hearings are done remotely, and you can attend a hearing via Zoom from your phone at a polling location.
Voters should not readily accept being turned away. Ask to speak to the person in charge, known as the Super Poll Worker, the individual who is most fluent in ways that can help you vote.
If you intend to appear before an election judge, you may call the ACLU Voter Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) or contact your county election officials. Click HERE for a list.