Democrats Lead As Middlesex County Still Counting Votes

MIDDLESEX COUNTY, NJ — Three days after the election, Middlesex County is still counting an unknown number of outstanding ballots, but Joe Biden, Rep. Frank Pallone, Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman and other Democrats are still very much in the lead.

As of Thursday, Middlesex County has 216,670 ballots counted, out of 553,000 registered voters.

Biden is leading Middlesex County with 141,000 votes (66 percent of the vote) to 70,250 for Trump (32 percent). That likely will not change even as more votes are counted; Middlesex County is reliably blue.

The county's two Democratic Congress reps, Pallone (NJ 6) and Watson-Coleman (NJ 12), also both easily defeated Republican challengers. Pallone received 81,000 votes so far, compared to 33,000 for Republican Christian Onuoha and Watson-Coleman beat Mark Razzoli, 60,000 to 33,000 votes.

Razzoli is a former Jersey City police detective who is now an Old Bridge Councilman. Razzoli used to be a Democrat but flipped to support President Donald Trump.

Razzoli said he will not concede "until all votes are counted."

"I don't concede to anyone who wants to defund the police and sacrifice public safety for votes. All the votes have to be counted," he told Patch Thursday afternoon. "She does not support law enforcement."

Razzoli was referring to this statement Watson-Coleman made after the death of George Floyd, where she said "Black people are rarely safe in the presence of police."

"I think it was horrible for someone in a leadership position to make that statement," he said.

Like many Republicans, Razzoli also blamed Murphy's vote-by-mail mandate for the days-long election results delay that New Jersey is currently experiencing.

"This is exactly why we 100 percent needed machine voting and voter ID. Gov. Murphy and other Democrats have turned our voting process into a third-world country. We are the laughingstock of other states and countries right now," he said.

"At the end of the day, voter ID and machine voting would have solved this problem. You slap the voter ID on the back of your driver's license. There is nothing racist about it."

Also, ballots mailed back on Election Day, machine votes and votes done on paper (provisionally) at the polls Tuesday will not be counted until Nov. 10, at the earliest.

This is because Murphy extended the deadline for mail-in votes, allowing them to be postmarked by Nov. 3 and received as late as Nov. 10. So county clerks cannot begin counting machine votes, etc. until they make sure all the mail-ins are received and they check that the same person didn't vote twice. This is the policy across New Jersey.