HOBOKEN — Hoboken held its local elections on Tuesday, Nov. 6, but the final results won’t be available until next Tuesday. This is because of provisional, absentee, and special electronic ballots accepted due to Hurricane Sandy.
In Hoboken, voters could pull the lever for up to three school board candidates and for three public questions.
The machine vote on Nov. 6 showed a victory for Board of Education ticket Kids First, comprised of candidates Ruth McAllister, Jean Marie Mitchell, and Tom Kluepfel.
The proposed date for a final count is Tuesday Nov 20 at the Hudson County Division of Elections office. Other municipalities also will be tallied that day.
Campaign manager for Kids First Deirdre Wall said, “Machine votes are one thing. It’s a waiting game at this point on the rest. In the past it has been quite organized. From what I understand, signatures are being checked as well as a cross referencing of machine votes with email votes to make sure there is no double voting. There is to be a committee made up of two Republicans and two Democrats [from the county] that finalize the count.”
Wall said she was happy with voter turnout in Hoboken this election.
“It was surreal to see people putting in the effort for an election right after the storm,” said Wall. “I had only gotten my power back the night before. It was also beneficial to move [Board of Education] elections to November. It really helped voter turn-out.”
If results stand, mayor/council elections will also be moved to November, in addition to last year’s move of Board of Education elections. A landslide “yes” vote (8,475 to 2,485) suggests that the result for public question 3 to move the elections to November, will stay.
Public question 1, which looked to eliminate runoff elections, also looks as though it will not be overturned.
However, the answers to public question 2, which would do away with rent control in some buildings — permanently in some and temporarily in others — are separated by a 531 vote difference, making tenant activists anxious. On the machine, the measure failed.