Kim, Richter Still Waiting On NJ 3rd District Vote Tallies

It was an election race that wasn't expected to be settled for several days. But with incumbent Democrat Andy Kim leading Republican David Richter by more than 34,000 votes early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press declared Kim the victor.

That view of the status of the race isn't shared by the candidates, however: Neither Kim nor Richter have issued any statements accepting the Associated Press interpretation of the results so far.

"There are still an unknown number of votes cast provisionally and an unknown number of ballots returned to polling locations yesterday," said Tom Bonforti, spokesman for Richter's campaign.

"Not yet," said Andrew Mamo, spokesman for the Kim campaign, when asked if they had a statement on the race.

Kim, 38, is seeking his second term in the House of Representatives seat that represents parts of Ocean and Burlington counties. Richter, 54, and two independents — Martin Weber, 56, and Robert Shapiro — were hoping to unseat him. Read more: Kim Wins In NJ's 3rd Congressional District: AP

Unofficial tallies as of early Wednesday in Ocean County with 235 of 236 districts reporting had Richter with 82,944 votes to 63,544 votes for Kim. Burlington County's unofficial early count had Kim with 109,465 and Richter with 55,151, giving Kim a 173,009 to 138,095 lead.

With the election being conducted primarily by mail-in ballot, counting the votes was expected to take longer because of the verification process. In addition, ballots that were postmarked by 8 p.m. Tuesday have until 8 p.m. on Nov. 10 to arrive and be counted. For voters who went to the polls and cast provisional ballots, those votes will be counted after it's verified that they did not cast a mail-in ballot.

Burlington County had received 235,940 mail-in ballots as of Wednesday morning, said Dave Levinsky from the Burlington County Public Information Office. Of those, about 181,000 had been counted as of 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Levinsky said the nearly 55,000 still to be counted do not include mail-in ballots postmarked Nov. 3 that may be delivered between now and Nov. 10, or any provisional ballots.

Ocean County Clerk Scott A. Colabella said the county still has little over 49,000 ballots to count as of Wednesday, a number that does not include mail-in ballots that were postmarked Nov. 3 and received at the Board of Elections no later than 8 p.m. on Nov. 10.

The Asbury Park Press reported 302,646 ballots had been returned to the Board of Elections as of 8:30 a.m. Tuesday. Of those, 273,100 ballots had been counted as of early Wednesday, meaning nearly 30,000 remained uncounted. There were 430,560 ballots mailed to eligible voters in Ocean County, the report said.

Kim won the 3rd District seat in 2018 by a 4,000-vote margin in a race that took eight days to finalize. It's not clear how long it will take before the vote totals are finalized sufficiently for either Kim or Richter to feel the race is over.

This article has been updated with the approximate number of ballots remaining to be counted in Ocean County as of Wednesday afternoon.

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