GA1107elect murray

Voters at Bridgewater Raritan High School on election day in 2012, after their regular polling locations were forced to close by Hurricane Sandy. A report issued today found some of the emergency voting measures taken by the state in the wake of Sandy were illegal.

(Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media)

TRENTON — While no voter fraud charges were ever filed, a highly critical report released on Thursday by the Rutgers School of Law in Newark concludes that emergency measures intended to allow people to vote in the days immediately after Hurricane Sandy violated state law.

The study said those steps—which included allowing people to request mail-in ballots by fax and email—led to mass confusion, overwhelming many county clerks on election day.

According to Penny Venetis, the co-director of the Constitutional Rights Clinic at Rutgers School of Law-Newark who authored the report, the internet and fax voting hastily put in play by the state in the wake of the storm was not only was illegal, but also left votes vulnerable to on-line hacking.



"Internet voting should never be permitted, especially in emergencies when governmental infrastructure is already compromised," she said in her report.

A spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie, however, said the law school’s findings ignored everything the state did in making sure as many people as possible had an opportunity to vote under what were extreme circumstances.

“The truth is that as a state, we were dealing with a disaster and catastrophic damage,” said the spokesman, Michael Drewniak. “We should be lauded for what we were able to do.”

The November 2012 Presidential election, which came just eight days after Sandy struck New Jersey on Oct. 29, knocked out power to 2.4 million homes and businesses in New Jersey. The superstorm displaced an estimated 161,000 families, damaging or destroying thousands of homes. At the same time, polling places across the state—many in public buildings with no power or in some cases, no walls—were no longer available to voters.

Five days before Election Day, the Secretary of the State and New Jersey’s top election official—Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno—began issuing a series of emergency voting measures to allow the vote to proceed on schedule. The report noted those measures included an extension of the deadline by which ballots would be processed, an expansion of the hours of operation at polling sites, and notification to the public about changes in voting procedures.

But Venetis said other measures, including Guadagno’s unilateral implementation of email and fax voting made voting severely vulnerable to fraud and violated state law.

“You can’t vote by internet. You can’t ask people to send their Social Security numbers through the email without secure servers,” she said. “You can’t implement something as an emergency measure that is clearly illegal.”

The report said there was no evidence that the governor authorized any of the directives.

“That means that Lt. Gov. Guadagno unilaterally altered New Jersey election law in the wake of Superstorm Sandy,” the report concluded.

Guadagno’s office said electronic voting was not without precedent.

"In years prior to 2012, certain New Jersey voters had been allowed to request and return a ballot by electronic transmission," said spokeswoman Kathryn Grosso. "For example, members of the military or overseas voters were allowed to vote by email and fax. Thus, the steps taken to enfranchise displaced Sandy victims in the immediate aftermath of the storm were not without lawful precedent.”

Venetis noted that New York, which was also hit hard by Sandy, also initiated emergency voting measures, but in contrast to New Jersey, explicitly rejected fax and e-mail ballots. New Jersey, she said, basically put in the most insecure measures to vote, at a time of crisis.



"It was not the way to deal with voting in an emergency situation," Venetis remarked.

The election saw voters from the Jersey Shore to Newark struggling to find relocated polling sites, with many waiting in long lines to cast their ballots. At the time, hundreds of those who attempting to vote electronically said they were met by busy signals, email error messages or silence, and could not tell if their ballots were counted.

In Essex County, for example, the Rutgers report noted that the day after election day, approximately 1,500 applications to cast votes electronically were still pending in the county system. That means that voters were never sent actual ballots and most likely did not vote, the report concluded.

One county clerk after another reported that faxes were jammed. Union County alone received from 3,000 to 4,000 fax and email applications for ballots, as other counties had fax machines run out of toner and email in-boxes became clogged with messages that could no longer be accepted.

Emails obtained by Venetis and her law students, referenced in the report, documented the frustration by some county clerks.

"To report and/or issue a directive and not to entertain questions or discussion is an absence of leadership and direction. It is quite literally shameful," Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi told state Election Director Robert Giles in an email on Nov. 1.

As the election went forward, the mounting confusion set off a legal tangle in state court, and Guadagno later ordered counties to accept electronic ballots until Friday—a move some Democrats and Republicans complained had been unconstitutional.

Monmouth County Clerk Claire French, though, in response to the Rutgers Law report, praised state's efforts following Sandy.

"Was it a perfect election? No," she said in a statement. "But our state rose to the challenge and that very important election year, we were able to provide voting assistance in so many ways."

While no fraudulent voting has been alleged, Venetis said there appeared to be no indication that anyone checked to determine if people voted twice, both electronically and in person, adding there are no logs to show whether or not that happened.

“We really don’t know,” she said.

Drewniak said had there been any evidence of fraud, there would have been lawsuits.

He also said the American Civil Liberties Union in its First Term Report Card gave the administration high marks in reacting swiftly to guarantee that the 2012 elections took place, specifically citing the actions of Guadagno and Giles to make sure eligible voters could receive ballots.

“I think this is Ivory Tower nonsense, especially given the praise we received from such organizations as the ACLU and New Jersey League of Women Voters for our efforts to give ever voter possible the opportunity to vote,” he said. “We’re proud of what we accomplished, so close to a dead-on hit by an incredible storm, in what was the worst natural disaster New Jersey ever experienced.”

Venetis has sent her report to the legislature, and said it is critical for New Jersey to enact emergency voting procedures that comply with existing election law, and specifically rule out internet and fax voting as an option.

"The state's plan was ill-advised from the very beginning and we want to make sure it does not happen again," she said.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.