NJ 3rd District: Kim Tries To Claim Win, MacArthur Says Not Yet

Democrat Andy Kim claimed victory over incumbent Republican Tom MacArthur in the race for New Jersey's 3rd Congressional District on Wednesday night, even as election officials work to certify provisional ballots and await a Thursday deadline for mail-in ballots.

MacArthur's response: It's not over yet.

"With the vast majority of votes now in and counted and based on the numbers we saw from Burlington County today, we have built a substantial lead," Kim said in an announcement at his Mount Laurel campaign headquarters. "I am proud to announce that we have won."

Kim holds a lead of 2,622 votes over MacArthur as of 9 p.m. Wednesday. According to unofficial results of 294,538 votes counted in Ocean and Burlington counties, Kim has received 148,580 votes to 145,958 for MacArthur.

But a mass distribution of mail-in ballots for the 2018 election, the result of a new law signed in August by Gov. Phil Murphy that required mail-in ballots to be sent to every person who received a mail-in ballot for either the 2016 or 2017 election, created confusion at the polls for many voters on Tuesday. As a result, many filled out provisional ballots. How many voters did so is not known, as both election officials in both Ocean and Burlington counties refused to say how many were filled out. They all must be checked and either certified or rejected before a count on those ballots can take place, a process that was underway on Wednesday.

As a result, MacArthur was not ready to concede.

"This has been a hard fought campaign and like Andy Kim, I'm ready to see it come to an end," he said in a statement posted to Facebook. "I have always said that I will be guided by the voters of the district and there are nearly 7,000 more of them who haven’t been heard from yet. We must ensure that their votes — and all votes — are counted in a transparent way that protects the integrity of this election."

It was not clear where MacArthur's figure of 7,000 votes came from, and a request to his campaign for clarification wasn't immediately answered.

The vote totals for the two candidates swung wildly Tuesday night. Ocean County, which is heavily Republican, posted results from those who voted at the polls by 9 p.m. Tuesday and, not surprisingly, MacArthur held a substantial lead of more than 20,000 votes. About 11 p.m., Burlington County posted its initial tallies from voters who went to the polls, and with an infusion of more than 87,000 votes in the heavily Democratic county, Kim took a 395-vote lead.

At midnight, Ocean County updated its vote totals with the results from more than 30,000 mail-in ballots, which boosted MacArthur back into the lead by 2,315 votes, which remained until Burlington County added in 25,000 mail-in ballots received there, pushing Kim back into the lead.

"It's going to be several days," a woman who answered the phone at the Burlington County Board of Elections said Wednesday morning of how long it will be before all the provisional ballots have been ruled on.

The provisional ballots have to be certified as valid before they can be counted; efforts to certify them were underway Wednesday, the woman at the Burlington County Board of Elections said. Across New Jersey, hundreds of voters cast provisional ballots after being sent mail-in ballots they did not request. (READ MORE:NJ's Mail-In Ballot Law Leaves Some Wondering If Votes Will Count)

As of 7:30 a.m., the unofficial tallies had MacArthur, the Republican incumbent, leading Democrat Kim by 2,315 votes, 136,408 for MacArthur and 134,093 for Kim. Ocean County's figures included 30,453 mail-in ballots cast so far.

The afternoon update from Burlington with 25,545 mail-in votes gave Kim 148,580 votes to 145,958 for MacArthur. The results so far show the split between the two halves of the district: In Ocean County, MacArthur has 76,868 votes to 46,677 for Kim, while in Burlington, Kim has 101,903 and MacArthur 69,090.

One thing is clear: Turnout for the 2018 midterms in the two counties was significantly higher than it was in 2014. Polling place turnout in Burlington was 42 percent higher on Tuesday than it was in 2014, and in Ocean the polling place turnout was 48 percent higher than it was in 2014.

The Philadelphia Inquirer was reporting that 7,000 mail-in ballots remained to be counted Wednesday morning in Burlington; it's not clear whether that is the number MacArthur was citing.

In 2016, there were 20,931 mail-in ballots cast in Burlington County and 9,327 were cast in the county during the 2014 midterm election, according to county records. In Ocean County, the 30,453 total of mail-in votes so far is slightly higher than the 29,202 cast in 2016 but more than double the 12,540 cast in the 2014 midterms.

In 2016, there were 2,113 provisional ballots certified in Ocean County and 2,302 in Burlington County.

The MacArthur campaign was not commenting on the situation Wednesday. Kim's campaign issued a statement at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, saying: "There are still tens of thousands ballots that need to be counted, many of which are from voters in Burlington County. We are confident that when all the votes are properly counted, Andy will be declared the winner."

Lawrence Berlinski of the Constitution Party also was running in the general election for the House of Representatives District 3 in New Jersey. Unofficial tallies had him with 3,815 votes, and those numbers likely will change as well, though how much is not clear.

Watch Kim's victory declaration below.

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Tom MacArthur and Andy Kim photos courtesy of their campaigns