In Mercer County, 11K Provisional Ballots Being Counted

PRINCETON, NJ — If you woke up Wednesday morning unsure about who won local races in your Mercer County town's, don’t be surprised. According to officials, the delay only means ever single ballot is being counted.

The election results page on the Mercer County Clerk's website, began displaying unofficial results as of 8 p.m. Tuesday night, when polls closed.

Many locals races have not been officially called yet, as the county is still counting 11,000 provisional ballots it received.

“We have received and counted 141,600 votes by mail ballots and posted results as of last evening. There are 11,000 provisional ballots to yet be counted. We will update as votes are counted,” an official from the Mercer County Clerk’s office told Patch.

This year’s General Election has been different due to the coronavirus. Gov. Phil Murphy signed Executive Order 177, ensuring all registered voters in New Jersey received their mail-in ballot.

Since the change to this year's election was announced by Murphy, there have been many questions about how the process will work.

Ballots cast by mail require extra steps to verify a voter’s identity and comparing signatures. With provisional ballots the verification process is time consuming as well. It often includes matching the affidavit signature on the outside of the envelope against the voter’s signature on record. Not to mention, it does take time to do mundane tasks like simply removing ballots from envelopes and stacking them up.

In Mercer County, the officials are clear of the job ahead of them.

“The Mercer County Board of Elections will count the mail-in ballots that arrived at polling locations and in drop boxes yesterday. Then after the Superintendent of Elections Office verifies every provisional ballot, those will go to the Board of Elections to be counted,” explained the official at Mercer County.

Provisional ballots are usually the last to be counted.

And if you’re waiting for the final results to be announced, looks like it might take some more time.

“Currently, it is too early to make results final. That will happen after the certification of the election which is set to be on November 20th. The Board of Elections is just opening ballots from yesterday and provisionals have not yet even begun to be counted,” explained the official.

When talking about the vote-by-mail process, Murphy was quite clear.

"Every vote should be safe. Every vote should be secure. Every vote should be counted," he said.

The officials are Mercer County are doing just that.

(Patch will update results as more votes are counted.)

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