Run-Off Election For Mayor, Council Seats Coming In Manchester: Update

Editor's note: This article was updated at 12:45 p.m. 11/10/2022

MANCHESTER, NJ — Manchester Township will be holding a run-off election for mayor and two township council seats, after none of the candidates reached a majority of the vote in Tuesday's election, the township clerk's office confirmed Thursday.

Robert Hudak and Robert Arace will face off in the mayoral run-off, and the council run-off will be Joan Brush, Timothy Poss, Joseph T. Hankins and Roxanne Conniff, with the election set for Dec. 6, Deputy Municipal Clerk Teri Giercyk confirmed.

The unofficial vote tallies as of Thursday morning have Hudak, the incumbent, as the top choice with 7,658 votes. Arace received 5,383, and Ken Seda had 4,263, according to the results posted by the Ocean County Board of Elections.

Of the total 17,102 ballots cast in the mayoral race through Tuesday, Hudak received 44.26 percent of the vote, and Arace 31.19 percent, while Seda received 24.48 percent.

State election law says the majority vote is defined as 50 percent of the vote plus one. Based on the 17,317 ballots cast, the 50 percent-plus-one threshold would have required 8,659 votes in the mayoral race.

Additional votes may be tallied after Saturday, which is the final day for mail-in ballots to be received by the Board of Elections.

In the council race, Brush has received 7,094 votes as of Thursday morning, Poss has 6,769, Hankins has 5,152, Conniff has 5,103, Gloria Adkinson has 4,280, and Karen Sugden has 4,040, and a total of 32,462 votes cast, none of which are close to 50 percent of the vote. Under state law, the candidates in a council or committee run-off election are the top vote-getters with twice the number of seats available. That is why Adkinson and Sugden are excluded from the council run-off.

Giercyk said the Manchester clerk's office is working to confirm all the details and will release them as soon as they are finalized.

The run-off represents "a significant cost" to Manchester, she said, but how much it will cost is still being finalized.