A bumbling execution of the November 2024 election in Burlington County that saw some voters waiting six hours to cast ballots shows many fixes in the county's election process are needed, according to an independent special counsel's review.
The Burlington County Commissioners ordered the review in January, and it was conducted by the Connell Foley law firm, which submitted interim recommendations on April 9. Lawyers John P. Lacey, of the Newark office and a former federal prosecutor, and Alexander J. Gacos, of the Roseland office and an investigations specialist, conducted the probe.
Burlington County's election failure comes as the nation's voting process has been under increasing fire from President Donald Trump and others across the nation.
On Election Day, the county "saw unacceptable voting delays at most of its polling locations across many of its 40 municipalities," according to the special counsel's report.
"Lines stretched out building entrances, into parking lots, onto adjacent fields. A large percentage of voters were forced to wait — sometimes for longer than six hours — to cast their votes in the hotly contested presidential year. Some voters finally voted at 3 a.m. the next day. For others, that moment never came," the lawyers wrote in their report.
The potential for Election Day landmines should not have come as a surprise.
"Burlington County election officials had warning of the problems that could — and did — plague the November 2024 election," the special counsel wrote. "Days after the 2024 primary election, a municipal clerk emailed county election officials about problems with the new election process: 'I think we all knew introducing the new machines would be challenging but I feel like many if not most of the issues could have been avoided with better communication and training not just for the Clerks but poll workers as well.'"
A "culture of territorialism" in county election offices also was uncovered by the investigation.
"Interviewees uniformly reported or strongly implied that interoffice, and sometimes intraoffice, constructive criticism is largely met with defensiveness or even personal attacks," according to the report, which noted that some election officials reportedly will not work together at all.
The special counsel made several recommendations to address the weaknesses in the voting process, so the June primary goes more smoothly in Burlington County.
Lacey and Gacos explained they conducted 32 interviews and "pored over thousands of documents relevant to the election process." They also inspected the county's voting machines to understand the machines' start-to-finish preparation in the election process.
Their interim report found:
- Lack of communication, coordination, and collaboration among Burlington County's election offices. Disagreements among personnel in election offices over the election appear "to stem from partisan tension, personality conflicts, or both, have created a culture of territorialism that prevents the communication, collaboration, and coordination necessary to prepare for, administer, and improve the county's elections process," according to the report.
- Late rollout of new voting machines without an earlier pilot program and in a presidential year.Â
- Lack of hands-on or, in some cases, any poll worker training with the new voting machines.
- Inadequate selection and training of advanced poll workers. "Not all advanced poll workers understood the voting process and machines comfortably enough for the role."
- Voter and poll worker aversion to new, unfamiliar technology. "Frustrated poll workers at one location experiencing delays on Election Day reportedly refused to accept the delivery of another machine from the Superintendent of Elections" that would have helped to alleviate delays.
- Opening only seven of 10 authorized polling locations for early voting.
- Issues with the number of voting machines deployed to each polling place and features of the voting process.
- Inconvenient, inaccessible, and cramped polling places. "Lines clogged doorways, posing safety concerns; locations had no seating for elderly and disabled voters to rest from hours of waiting; the new voting machines, which were larger than the old machines, barely fit in some polling rooms."
- Layouts of polling locations in ways that clogged voter flow.
- Delays in resolving technological issues at the polling places.
"Burlington County would benefit by focusing on recruiting efforts to hire more poll workers who feel comfortable navigating new technology," the lawyers suggested.
Training of those poll workers also resulted in a big failure in the November election, according to the report.
"The preparation of poll workers is paramount to a well-run election. If the Board of Elections administrators do not meaningfully improve the depth and frequency of training of poll workers, the delays that occurred in November 2024 will likely repeat in the future," according to the special counsel's report.
While the report credits poll workers and says the process is fortunate to have them, it also said the workers need to be clear in their roles: "Instead of assuring less-than-confident poll workers that 'someone else will know what to do on election day, as one interviewee put it,' the Board of Elections should encourage all poll workers to take ownership of their roles in the process."
