The Patch is currently running a story about an idiotic claim the Democrats made at the most recent council meeting. They assert that somehow collecting petition signatures about the pavilions from the Main Street sidewalk near where people were voting in a U.S. Senate primary was electioneering at a polling station.
They don’t seem to get that the electioneering laws are to protect the integrity of THAT ELECTION. It has nothing to do with any possible future election or referendum. As a matter of fact, the referendum in question now looks unlikely to ever happen anyway since the mayor decided to use his redevelopment law as duct tape over the mouths of the voters.
If the purpose of the law was to prevent any word that might be uttered somehow affecting how anybody might vote in any possible future election then they would have to enforce absolute silence in the building the entire time! The whole claim is completely rediculous.
You see, the electioneering law was designed to prevent something like, say, a candidate for borough council here in Belmar spending hours hanging around inside the building where polling was taking place and chatting with people who were there to vote in an election that she was in. That would be really terrible. I’m sure glad this administration is so concerned about the integrity of our elections that they would never allow that to happen.
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Just so you know, electioneering is not just related to those running for office. No one is supposed to be “hanging around” a polling place. Specifically the New Jersey law (NJ Statute 19:34-6) uses the term “loiter in or near the polling place”.
I might suggest, that since all polling in Belmar will now be at Borough Hall, that the Mayor and Council should discuss in an executive work session of Council, just how they should act at Borough Hall on election days. I think in particular the Mayor and all council members should only be at borough hall on election day to vote. Vote and leave. That would help insure or maintain an appearance of impropriety. My feeling is that if the Mayor or any Borough official hangs around outside the actual polling room, or outside of Borough Hall near (100 feet the law says) the entrances, that they are guilty of electioneering…The same holds true for any individual whose name is on a ballot for that election too. Candidates, however, can serve as an election challenger,but as such they have a specific seat to be at, and cannot speak to anyone except an election official.
Thank you, once again for pointing out the stupidity of the claim and for referencing the blatant violation by “one of their own” last election.
Keep up the good work.
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