Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried and the Township Council are calling for major changes in the Mercer County election system.
Last month, the council passed a resolution asking the County Executive Brian Hughes and the Mercer County Board of Commissioners to eliminate the positions of superintendent and deputy superintendent of elections.
The move comes after the 2022 general election on Nov. 8 saw multiple issues, the worst of which was a county-wide problem with voting machines that resulted in voters having to cast paper ballots.
In addition, Robbinsville experienced a situation where ballots were lost, and another in which about 6% of township voters were disenfranchised.
Those voters received letters weeks after the election informing them that their votes did not count. The letter, which came from the County Board of Elections said: “Unfortunately, your provisional ballot was not counted for the following reason: Voted by Machine.”
The disenfranchised voters apparently signed in at their polling stations with the intention of voting on the machine, but were given a provisional ballot because the machine scanners were not processing the ballots.
The election “was plagued by many issues, including poor communication from the offices of the superintendent and deputy superintendent of elections and malfunctioning voting machines that created a chaotic atmosphere for voters, poll workers and election officials,” states the council resolution.
The measure also maintains that, “clear information has not been forthcoming from either the Mercer County Board of Elections or the Mercer County Superintendent of Elections, with each office avoiding accountability and casting blame on the other for the mishaps during and after the 2022 General Election.”
According to the resolution, the township council and the mayor are united in calling for the Board of Commissioners to eliminate the superintendent and deputy superintendent positions “to help streamline Mercer County’s election processes and ensure accountability from Mercer County’s election officials.”
In addition to the resolution, Council Vice President Mike Todd called for changes during a meeting of the Board of County Commissioners earlier this year.
““Something needs to change,” Todd said. “Training for poll workers needs to be revamped along with better communication between departments with a more efficient way to schedule poll workers. It’s not going to change overnight and it’s not going to change without your support as well.”
He also said the county should explore using different voting machines, and replacing the ones that had problems on Nov. 8.
According to Todd, the commissioners deferred to the Mercer County Board of Elections on most of the issues raised by the public during the meeting, stating that the board is the entity responsible for the operational component of county elections.
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During an interview in February, Robbinsville Advance editor Bill Sanservino spoke with Mayor Dave Fried about the election problems and the impacts on the township. An edited version of that discussion appears in Q&A format below.
Robbinsville Advance: Almost every leader in the towns I cover has privately complained about the problems that Mercer County has had with elections over the past few years. You’ve been a lot more outspoken. What are your thoughts about what has gone on with elections in Mercer?
Dave Fried: First off, I’m always careful about saying things about the election, because there’s been so much election denying and conspiracy theories. I don’t believe there were any conspiracies. I don’t believe that there were people who are meaning to do bad.
However there is absolutely, positively no doubt that there was gross incompetence. It was the most embarrassing election I’ve ever seen. And last year (2021) was a horror show. So the fact that they were able to exceed it in 2022 almost seems like someone tried. I’ve never seen anything like it. We had no chain of custody for the ballots. Ballots were arriving opened. Uber was used to deliver ballots.
We literally sent communications to the superintendent of elections and also to the Mercer County Clerk saying we would like to have our police officers take the ballots to the to the collection place. We were told, “no, it can’t possibly be done.”
And then our ballots were lost. No one ever even explained how they were lost or how they were found, of if they were really found.
To this day, I still have no idea. It’s shocking to me that anyone could be this bad at this two years in a row.
I think having three independent government entities—the election board, the county clerk and the superintendent of elections—all reporting to effectively no one, and each one of them being allowed to point the finger at the other, is ridiculous.
We should eliminate the superintendent of elections office. It’s ridiculous. Mercer County doesn’t have to have it, and they could not be worse at their job. The only thing that they’re worse at is communications.
They literally—with no explanation—sent 6% of our voters a letter saying, “Sorry, your vote doesn’t count.” At the same exact time they were in the newspapers saying, “Don’t worry, every vote was counted.”
I mean, you got to be kidding me. And the 6% is only the ones we know about. There’s no question in my mind that there are more.
Not one of our ballots were scanned. They were thrown in a bag and brought in. There is no way that anybody knows whose ballot was whose, because we were giving them out like candy.
There was no tracking. There was absolutely, positively no way to know whose ballot was turned in and whether or not your ballot counted. They know whether or not you showed up at the poll that day. But whether your vote counted? There’s zero percent chance anyone can tell you whether or not that was true. That is unacceptable.
RA: It was just as bad when it came to communications. Like you said, there was a lot of finger pointing. There was no official statement released as to what happened, what went on or what was going on.
For weeks after the election, if you wanted to know what the results were, you had to go through a convoluted process. You had to look one place on a website for one set of result and then also download a document with more results, and then add them together. It seemed that there was a lack of leadership, a lack of ownership, and a total lack of communication on the issue.
DF: Absolutely.
RA: The morning of the election we received no official notice from the county about the problem with the voting machines. We found out what was going on through alerts from the Robbinsville and West Windsor police departments. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have known.
DF: It’s horrifying. Ballots were left in the machines in many places—Princeton had ballots left in the machines overnight. There were photos of ballots strewn all over the floors. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it.
Not one person lost their job. Not one person got held accountable. Not one person got written up. Still to this day, we don’t know the exact problem with the voting machnes.
Was it the software that was bad? Was it the ballots that were bad. I’ve heard both stories. I’ve heard that the software company was responsible. And the printing company was responsible.
It’s two years in a row. Knowing that you screwed up the year before, what would possibly possess you to not test the ballots before you put them in the field? I mean, this is just common sense.
The truth of the matter is—and I’m going to be rough on this—if you’re never held accountable, if you know you can’t be fired, if you know you’re not going to lose your job, if you know you’re not going to be written up regardless of how bad a job you do, what does it matter?
You have three portions of government that are in charge of elections and for two years in a row, they’ve completely failed to do their job. And the only thing that they can muster to do is explain why it’s the other person’s fault.
I say it all the time that it’s about accountability. Leadership is when you take responsibility for things that may not be your responsibility. You step forward and you do it. I have not seen that anywhere for many of these folks. I had 700 ballots missing and the county clerk was in Atlantic City having fun. No way I would have shown my face if I knew that that was happening. There’s no way.
RA: Was she at the state League of Municipalities Annual Conference?
DF: Yeah, the League of Municipalities. I mean, can you imagine?
RA: Well, during that week, the entire state shuts down.
DF: But again, if you’re doing a bad job, that’s not where you belong.
The attorney general came to see me about ballots, but not to talk to me about my missing ballots. They wanted to know why I put the fact that we had 700 missing ballots on my Facebook page.
That said they were concerned because I was, “undermining people’s faith in the elections.”
Forget about the fact that they lost 700 of my ballots. The fact that I told the public was the problem. And if you start thinking about government gone wrong, the minute that we get reprimanded for telling the public the truth about what’s going on, we’re in a bad spot.
When the attorney general shows up in my office with two investigators to talk about the fact that I was transparent with my voters about the fact that they had ballots missing is shocking to me.
If this is where we’re headed in the state of New Jersey, it really is scary. If we’re going to cover up our incompetence in our elections, that’s a bad spot for us to be. We stink at this. We need to get better. And the fact that we want to hide it is not the answer.
RA: I heard that a few weeks ago, Bill Spadea (the morning host) on 101.5 went after you on the on the radio. Do you think that had anything to do with your stance on the election? Do you think there’s somebody you made angry and they got their mouthpiece to go after you? Or was it just a grudge?
DF: Listen, at the end of the day, I say my truth and it does piss some people off. And yes, some people, like Bill Spadea, don’t think I’m Republican enough, or that I’m too to this or too that.
I have been hit by people like Bill Speadea that I’m not Republican enough. I’ve been hit by some of the more liberal side that I’m far too Republican.
That to me is perfect, because if the Republicans think I am not Republican enough and the Democrats think I’m not liberal enough, I’m probably right where I belong, which is right smack dab in the middle where our town is supposed to be, which is a non-partisan town.
I’ll work with anybody and everybody knows it. I have just as many friends on the Democratic side of the aisle, and I work with my Democratic neighbors.
I’ve worked hard with Janice Mironov (mayor of East Windsor) and Jeff Martin (mayor of Hamilton), who were my teammates during the pandemic, both of whom are Democrats. They did a fantastic job, and I’m the first one to go out and say they did a good job, because I call them like I see them.
At the same time, I will also work with Republicans. We should fight during election time. Then we should be adults, come into the middle and get things done, because at the end of the day, the bickering doesn’t accomplish anything.
And yes, sometimes I have to move a little bit to the left, or I might have to move a little bit to the right, but if I can get something done—maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s significantly better than it was.
That’s the job. Today it seems like the sport is, “let’s keep everybody fighting with each other and that therefore we don’t have to be held accountable to get anything done.”
I’d much rather work with either side and get something done and then be criticized by a guy like Bill Spadea than I would never getting anything done.
The thing that I’ve done that Bill Spadea has never done, and probably never will do, is to get elected. You don’t get to govern if you don’t get elected. At the end of the day, Bill can be as hardcore as he wants, but he’ll never get elected, and therefore he’ll never have a chance to govern.
So it’s easy to say what you’d love to do from the cheap seats, but when you actually have to do the work and pass a law or pass a bill or get people to come on board to do something, that’s the hard work. And it’s compromise. That’s what government is supposed to do, And today, we don’t see that.
I’m fiscally conservative. I believe in balanced budgets, which is why I became a Republican. But socially, I’m quite liberal. I was one of the first mayors to perform a gay marriage.
I’d much rather two people love each other than hate each other. I mean, it was an easy decision for me. So, from that perspective, I don’t really have those issues. I really just focus on what I think is right, and I let the shock jocks and clowns say what they’re going to say.
Because at the end of the day, I mean, that’s their job, right?
Tip O’Neill, a Democrat—that was his thing. I mean, nobody passed more laws because he was able to get in the middle. Chris Smith, the Republican gets laws passed on both sides of the aisle. Why? Because he works together and that’s ultimately what we’re supposed to do. And yeah, we can slug it out during election time, but then it’s time to become a grown up and govern.
RA: And my experience has been over the years that national party issues, even state party issues, often don’t translate down to the local level. I’ve seen full Democrat township committees, township councils who are very conservative in the way that they govern, and I’ve seen it the other way around. So it’s, you know, saying somebody to not Republican enough at the local level. I don’t I’m not sure that’s valid
DF: Speaker 3 Right.
RA: All right. Let’s move on.
I think the stadium thing originated from canceling Community Day.
DF: Yeah, I think that that’s where he got most anger.
Yeah that’s.
DF: He was an anti it you know you think.
He’s like cancel stuff. Yeah I mean.
DF: I mean I had a I had two schools that were shut down. Two schools and this clown thought I should have community day and bring all the kids together from the schools that were just canceled because we were.
Speaker 3 Literally had a big outbreak at Pond or the high school the day before.
DF: Yeah. I mean, I can’t even imagine doing something that irresponsible. You know what I mean? That that’s just unimaginable to me.
There’s no accountability whatsoever, and that unfortunately is a real problem throughout Mercer County. You know, one party rule has not necessarily served us well.
The fact that we (Mercer County) couldn’t pay our payroll taxes for the tune of $5 million is shocking to me. You know, there’s got to be more money missing than that. You don’t not pay your payroll taxes because you’re flush with cash. You don’t pay your payroll taxes because you’ve got cash flow problems in other places. They willfully changed the address on the violation notices to a a P.O. box. You don’t do that unless you know you’re doing wrong.
RA: Which notices?
DF: The notices from the IRS were changed from the county to a P.O. box that the CFO controlled, because he didn’t want the notices coming to the county. You know you’re doing wrong when you’re doing that. That’s not a mistake. That’s not an oops.
RA: It looks like someone is trying to hide something.
DF: That’s willful. It’s shocking to me, and we need to do better. If that happened here, I’d fire myself. I mean, it’s absolutely, positively unacceptable. I mean
The Robbinsville Township municipal building. Robbinsville plans to sell the building if plans to lease the former Investors Bank building next door come to fruition. (Staff photo by Rob Anthes.)// <
