Richter Trims Kim's Lead In NJ's 3rd Congressional District

NEW JERSEY — Vote tallies continue to trickle in for New Jersey's 3rd Congressional District race, and on Friday the updated totals have Republican David Richter trimming the lead held by incumbent Democrat Andy Kim.

Election officials in Ocean and Burlington counties reported about 10,000 additional votes each on Friday. In Burlington, Kim's count rose to 127,265 and Richter's tally rose to 70,074, according to the unofficial results. In Ocean County, Kim's tally is 71,864 and Richter has 96,391.

The combined unofficial tallies have Kim continuing to lead the race, with 199,129 votes so far, to 166,465 for Richter, a margin of 32,664 as of 5 p.m. Friday, down from more 34,000 on Thursday.

There are still more than 50,000 ballots to be counted between Ocean and Burlington counties, however, according to officials in both counties.

In Ocean County, there were about 17,000 mail-in ballots still to be counted, Clerk Scott A. Colabella said , and in Burlington, there were nearly 35,000 mail-in ballots to count, said Dave Levinsky of the Burlington County public information office.

Those totals could still change, because ballots that were mailed and postmarked by Nov. 3 have until 8 p.m. Nov. 10 to reach the county election board offices to be counted. And both counties have an unknown number of provisional ballots, which will get counted after the mail-in ballot deadline.

Those ballots to be counted are countywide, and include other congressional races.

Burlington County officials will be checking and processing ballots over the weekend, but will not be counting votes, Levinsky said. So there will not be vote updates until sometime Monday. It was not clear whether Ocean County was following a similar plan over the weekend.

The Kim and Richter campaigns continue to wait for results and neither has issued any statements since Wednesday evening. The Associated Press on Tuesday night named Kim the winner on the strength of Kim's lead, which was 34,000 votes at the time. Read more: Kim Wins In NJ's 3rd Congressional District: AP

"There are still some more ballots to count before we know for sure," Kim said Wednesday evening in a tweet. "We see right now across our nation the critical importance of ensuring we get this right. Our democracy depends on it." Read more: Kim, Richter Still Waiting On NJ 3rd District Vote Tallies

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