Passaic won’t count votes until Wednesday

The Passaic County Board of Elections is not expected to resume counting votes until Wednesday, the New Jersey Globe has learned.

No county in the state has moved slower than Passaic in counting votes for the July 7 primary election, leaving some candidates from both parties perplexed and annoyed by the delay.

John Currie, who serves as Democratic State Chairman and Passaic County Democratic Chairman, is also chairman of the Passaic County Board of Elections.  He’s responsible for setting the schedule for county votes.

Passaic last announced vote tallies on Wednesday after county election officials went home on election night with sharing numbers with the public.

About 28,000 votes have been counted out of nearly 50,000 ballots returned.  This total could increase tomorrow, the last day for votes postmarked by Election Day to arrive at the county Board of Elections.

Provisional ballots have also not been counted.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) currently leads his primary race with 83% of the vote and is at 87% on Passaic County.  Once Passaic numbers are tallied, that number is likely to increase.

Zina Spezakis, who challenged Pascrell in the Democratic primary, has complained about the absence of a vote count.

“When the Passaic county board of elections chair is also the New Jersey State Democratic chair, the fox is guarding the hen house,” Spezakis wrote on Twitter. How are we assured the ballots are not tampered?”

Spezakis said that the Board of Elections has not returned phone calls from her campaign.

In the Republican U.S. Senate primary, Tricia Flanagan currently leads Rik Mehta by 317 votes.  Flanagan has said she is waiting to for the rest of Passaic to be counted, as if that’s her ticket to finding the extra 60,000 votes she needs to win.