Officials from the Hudson County Board of Elections confirmed Wednesday afternoon that a box of 79 additional absentee ballots for the Hoboken mayor's race was discovered in the county elections office. The absentee ballots will be certified and will count, officials said.
There was also a meeting at the office scheduled for Wednesday afternoon to talk about remaining questions and provisional ballots in Tuesday's Hoboken mayoral election, and the results of all the voting may not be available until Friday, according to officials.
As reported earlier, Dawn Zimmer is slightly ahead in the machine votes, while many of the more than 700 absentee ballots gave Peter Cammarano the lead.
In any case, Zimmer's council slate of Carol Marsh, Ravi Bhalla, and David Mello likely won the three open council-at-large seats, despite the confusion over the mayor's seat.
The new officials will be sworn in during the first week in July...unless, of course, the election is not decided by then.
We will publish more as the story develops.
Mr Cammarano will "win" if the current "numbers" are judged credible.
There needs to be a federal investigation of this *election*, whatever the outcome. There are a number of glaring "irregularities" that clearly will not be dealt with by Hudson County or by NJ ELEC (which has little credibility left when it comes to enforcing any kind of regulatory discipline on Mr. Cammarano).
It may be necessary to haul in every single one of the alleged "voters" who submitted absentee ballots into a federal deposition where they can testify under oath.
There are many HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS at stake in how Hoboken is "developed" over the next four years. That kind of money drives all manner of criminality and ambition.
The extreme disproportionality between the Zimmer victory at the actual polls and the 3 to 1 pro Cammarano result is too much to believe on its face.
Optical scan readers are very reliable pieces of equipment, they just don't break down that often....and then just "finding" a new box of votes the day after a close election is too weird for words.
The scores of people from NYC who were conned into going to Zimmer headquarters demanding $200.00 paydays need to be given a chance to testify. That matter needs to be thoroughly investigated, and the criminal perpetrators who engaged in that INTERSTATE FRAUD need to be tried, convicted and jailed.
The Obama Justice Department needs to come into this town and clean up the mess.
Any judge or official who rules against what is just for corrupt reasons needs to know that a record is being created...a record that just may come back to haunt them (in the form of a long prison sentence) *if* they are engaged in illicit behavior. I hope that Ms Zimmer creates that record by doing all she legally can to aggressively contest and appeal every suspicious aspect of this farce. No legal stone must be left unturned in the pursuit of the truth.