Thousands of New Jersey Voters Receive Wrong Mail-in Ballots: Official

A voter leaves after filling out their ballot at the Beltrami County Administration building in Bemidji, Minn., on Sept. 18, 2020. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Thousands of New Jersey voters received wrong mail-in ballots that listed the incorrect congressional district, just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, officials said this week.

Bergen County Clerk John Hogan told NorthJersey.com that voters who received the erroneous ballots will get new ones over the coming days, saying that voters who got the wrong ballots should shred them after getting the new, corrected ones. About 7,000 incorrect ballots were sent to voters in Teaneck.

The issue occurred at a private mailing company that was contacted by a firm that prints the ballots for the county, Hogan added.

Hogan said that about 1,325 5th Congressional District voters received ballots with the 9th Congressional District race on it. A similar issue happened with 5,542 9th District ballots, he added.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, announced the state would use mail-in-voting used in the state’s primary.

“We’re going to extend that model into the general election in November. Most importantly, we’ve learned some lessons, including we’re going to have more presence of secure drop boxes,” Murphy said in August.

But he said that in-person voting will be available as well.

“Make sure there is that physical, in-voting capacity. And as it relates to mail-in ballots, the good news is in a general election, it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, everybody gets a ballot,” he added.

The incident comes as a mail carrier in Kearny, New Jersey, was arrested for throwing out mail, including dozens of mail-in ballots.

Beauchene, 26, was charged with one count of delay, secretion, or detention of mail and one count of obstruction of mail. He was scheduled to appear Wednesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy Waldor in Newark federal court.

Beauchene has been a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) since July, according to a criminal complaint.

Meanwhile, this week, about 2,100 Los Angeles County voters received faulty ballots without the ability to vote for a presidential candidate.

Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said in a statement, “We are now in the process of alerting all affected voters in this precinct of the error by robocall and email, and tomorrow morning we will be mailing out new, corrected ballots with a letter describing the error.”

A spokesperson for the county clerk’s office, Michael Sanchez, told KTLA that “while this has impacted a very small number of Los Angeles County voters … we nevertheless apologize to those affected by the mistake.”

The issue was noted by President Donald Trump on Twitter, who wrote that 2,000 Los Angeles County voters got the ballots “with NO WAY TO VOTE FOR PRESIDENT.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.