Burlington County Clerk Joanne Schwartz forgot to hold a ballot draw for local office in Pemberton Township and Woodland when she held her drawing for the rest of the county on April 4.
“After reviewing the footage from the live drawing and witnessing your certification on the County Clerk website, it is clear there were many shortcomings and failures of the Burlington County Clerk offices statutory requirements to carry out their required constitutional duties efficiently and accurately,” the GOP leaders in both towns said in separate but mostly identical letters to Schwartz.
The Pemberton Township GOP leaders slammed Schwartz, a Democrat, for her screwup.
“Whether these issues were due to hastily deciding to defy the judge’s orders and break the law multiple times in the interest of your political party bosses or just strictly the incompetence of your patronage hires being unequipped to carry out their duties, we’ll leave the court of public opinion to decide,” they said.
Now, with ballots due to be printed soon and the commencement of vote-by-mail ballot mailing coming up on April 20, Schwartz will hold another ballot draw on Monday.
“The issue will be resolved,” said Schwartz’s spokesman, David Levinsky. “There will be a public draw on Monday.”
But Levinsky declined to answer questions about how or why the two municipalities were skipped, or why it took a week – and a letter from Republicans – to notice that the two drawings were never held.