In an editorial, New Jersey Republican State Committeeman Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein says that everyone needs to work together to fight “ballot harvesting” in New Jersey and Hudson County.
With Georgia under attack by those pretending its laws do not allow early voting (it does) and that it prohibits drinking water in line (it does not), election integrity is in the national spotlight.
Nationally, Democrats are feigning objecting to requiring identification at the voting booth.
They allege it is a racist constitutional violation, as if Black and Hispanic Americans are somehow unable to get drivers licenses or other ID, yet they have no problem proposing a national system requiring people carry medical ID papers to travel, gather, and exercise free assembly – a 1st amendment freedom.
In New Jersey, we have seen the re-run of a vote-by-mail election in Paterson because two sitting City Council members were charged with election fraud.
We have also witnessed the opening of an investigation by the state Attorney General into the racist flyer allegedly created by some Edison Democrats suspected of targeting themselves as a false flag attempt to gain support by playing the victim (possibly similar to events in Hoboken’s 2017 mayoral race).
Of course, the recent 2020 presidential election in which many state level Democrat officials changed the voting rules in extra-constitutional, and likely outright illegal, ways in the 11th hour has undermined Republican, independent, and international faith in American elections.
Ballot harvesting, something New Jersey Democrats once voted to limit due to the danger of voter fraud, is now being pushed federally by the national Democrat party.
Confidence in the electoral process is not high.
Hudson County residents need to be concerned not only about these issues on the state and national level but also locally.
The county voter rolls are notoriously inaccurate, with massive numbers of people who have moved or passed on to a better place still on the voter list.
Indeed, in the rest of New Jersey people often make the old joke that they want to be buried in Hudson County so they can continue to vote even after they die.
By law the county is required to have both a superintendent and a deputy superintendent of elections to ensure the efficiency and integrity of elections and maintain accurate voter rolls.
The same law requires that the Superintendent and the Deputy be of different parties to
ensure a fair and balanced process. Yet Hudson County has only a Democrat at the helm as acting superintendent and no Republican.
Rumors abound that all the Republicans working for the Superintendent’s office are stationed in the warehouse, sitting around with powered down voting machines, and are not part are parcel of the supposed efforts to keep the county voting rolls in order.
Moreover, sources state that a subordinate has been running the office after the acting superintendent suffered medical problems many months ago.
Election investigators who exist to investigate false voter registrations, it is worried by many, may be partisan appointees instructed not to do the job in more than a cursory or perfunctory way.
As the negatively impacted party, Republicans of all types should be expected to fight to right the broken electoral system, but it is incumbent on all people – Republicans, independents, and Democrats to seek a voting system and elections that are beyond reproach.
While the current “leader” of the Hudson County Republican Party, Jose Arango, who has worked unofficially as the Hudson County Democrats pet Republican for years, has not said a peep on the issue, many Republicans and the people of Hudson County have had enough.
Solving the issue of election integrity on the state and national level may seem daunting, but for all those in Hudson County concerned with free and fair elections, it begins by addressing voting integrity on the local level.
Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein
New Jersey Republican State Committeeman