Hundreds of county committee members representing four different county Republican Parties will descend on Freehold tomorrow to determine who will replace the late Assemblyman Ron Dancer (R-Plumsted) – but the certified list of eligible voters from Burlington County still has yet to be released.
If the list remains outstanding, it could lead to a postponement of the special election convention, though that is unlikely.
There are complex rules regarding which can vote in tomorrow’s election. In order to vote on Dancer’s replacement, a committee member must have either won an election in their county committee district or have been appointed to a district where they live; those appointed to districts where they do not live aren’t eligible.
Certified lists of eligible committee members from Middlesex, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties have all been released. Ironically, Burlington County makes up by far the smallest portion of the district with only 14 committee seats compared to 80 or more in each of the other three counties.
Burlington GOP Chairman Sean Earlen said that he is prepared to take Burlington County Clerk Joanne Schwartz, a Democrat, to court to compel her to release the list.
“Even though Burlington Democrats and Clerk Joanne Schwartz choose to ignore deadlines when appointing candidates, legal deadlines are taken seriously by Burlington County Republicans,” Earlen said. “By squatting on our request for the certified list of county committee members in the 12th district, the Clerk is disenfranchising County Committee members and the residents of Burlington County from allowing them to choose their next representative in the Assembly. We are seriously considering taking our legal OPRA request to a judge in the coming hours in an effort to compel the Clerk to do her job.”