The New Jersey Republican Party is pleading with the Trump administration to send monitors to a crucial swing county for the gubernatorial election after the Democratic-controlled Board of Elections refused security to station cameras in ballot storage areas.
Given Passaic County’s troubled history with election fraud allegations, a law firm for the New Jersey GOP argued that the Justice Department should supervise the handling of vote-by-mail ballots at minimum.
“Passaic County has a long and sordid history of [vote-by-mail] fraud with multiple indictments for ballot stuffing and falsifying [vote-by-mail] ballots in recent elections,” attorney Jason Sena, whose firm represents the New Jersey GOP, wrote in a letter to the DOJ obtained by The Post.
“Despite these indictments, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has proven incapable of prosecuting these matters; indicted politicians remain in office years after their initial indictment.”
Passaic County, the state’s 10th most populous county, is widely seen as crucial to the Republicans’ chances of flipping the governor’s mansion next month.
It was home to a massive upset last November, after President Trump eked out a 3 percentage point win. Four years prior, in 2020, Trump lost Passaic County by 16.6 percentage points.
Earlier, that same year, officials unearthed mail-in ballot irregularities in a local election and determined that a local election needed to be redone.
Former Paterson City Council President Alex Mendez and others were hit with charges of election fraud, public records tampering, forgery and more for the 2020 election — which was entirely conducted by mail-in ballot.
The case against Mendez is still ongoing, with additional charges slapped against him this past April.
When county officials reviewed the ballots for the Patterson city council election to compare the signatures with those on file, they ended up disqualifying 20% of all ballots cast.
Among them were 800 ballots there were found “improperly bundled” in a mailbox, according to The Bergen Record.
“In at least one instance in 2020, news reports indicate hundreds of stolen, falsified ballots were received in Passaic,” Sena added in the letter to Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Division at the DOJ.
“Despite this obligation and the documented history of fraud, [Passaic County Board of Elections and its Chairman, John] Currie and his Democratic colleagues routinely stand in opposition to basic transparency.”
Last Friday, the Passaic County Board of Elections deadlocked over a GOP proposal to set up 24-hour security cameras near ballot storage areas and a sign-in/sign-out log for people accessing them.
Top Republican officials in New Jersey quickly slammed the move. But Sena suggested that there is even more to the story.
“Republican stakeholders, including the Passaic County Republican Committee Chair, have information regarding [vote-by-mail] ballot fraud that we are prepared to share with the Division. We also have at least one audio recording to share that bears directly on these issues,” he added.
The Post reached out to the New Jersey Republican Party for details about that audio recording and additional information cited in the letter, as well as officials at Passaic County and the DOJ for comment.
Concerns about Passaic County come during a tight race between Republican Jack Ciattarelli and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) for governor.
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