4 Days Later, 3rd Congressional District Election Still Unsettled

Four days after Election Day and three days after Democrat Andy Kim declared that he had won, the final results of New Jersey’s Third Congressional District election remain up in the air.

As of Friday morning, Kim had extended his lead over incumbent Republican Tom MacArthur to 3,424. Kim had 150,311 votes, to MacArthur’s 146,887. Constitution Party candidate Lawrence Berlinski had 3,837 votes, but there were still more to count in both counties.

In Ocean County, there were still 309 mail-in ballots that were eligible for review. In New Jersey, mail-in ballots can be accepted up to 48 hours after Election Day as long as they are postmarked before or on the day of the election, in this case Nov. 6. There are also 2,024 provisional ballots that need to be reviewed.

The situation was less clear in Burlington County, where they continued to count ballots, but no one could provide a clear update on where that count stood. On Wednesday, a woman at the Burlington County Board of Elections told Patch the count would take “several more days.”

On Wednesday night, Kim declared that he had won. At that point, he had 148,580 votes, compared to 145,958 for MacArthur. MacArthur said at that time that votes must be counted in “transparent way that protects the integrity of this election."

Neither campaign has made a public comment since, and spokespeople for the campaigns didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment Friday morning.

This mid-term election saw a significantly higher turnout than the 2014 election. 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.

There was also a high number of mail-in and provisional ballots cast. 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.

They all must be checked and either certified or rejected before a count on those ballots can take place.

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.

Tom MacArthur and Andy Kim photos courtesy of their campaigns.