UNION COUNTY, NJ — The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in so many delays that the Union County Democratic Committee voted in a virtual convention recently to delay its elections until 2023. Citing safety concerns, the committee and all municipal chairpersons agreed to extend the terms for all members from two to four years. This decision was met with opposition.
In a statement released by the Progressive Democrats for Legislative District 20, which consists of Elizabeth, Hillside, Roselle and Union, state Senate candidate Jason Krychiw and state Assembly candidates Aissa C. Heath and Ricky Castaneda said this move was a “cowardly assault on democracy” and “another example of a behind-closed-door power grab.”
“The reason given by the county chairperson, Nick Scutari, was that the county clerk said, logistically, it would be too hard,” they continued. “They also cited health and safety concerns. We have our doubts that either of these reasons is truly valid. The convention took place Feb. 16, the motion to amend the bylaws was introduced by one municipal chairperson and seconded by Joe Cryan. The motion passed and new bylaws were adopted.”
“I imagine the Republican Committee had the same reasoning,” Krychiw said on Friday, Feb. 19. “But as a member of the UCDC, I only saw the official statement for the UCDC side of things.”
The three candidates of the Progressive Democrats for Legislative District 20 said collectively that, prior to this vote, the term of a county committee member was two years and the last vote was in the June 2019 primary. The next was to be in the 2021 primary. Due to the control of the chairpersons, once they unanimously made these changes and endorsed them, they were assured to pass in a vote by the general membership. The fate of the more than 800 County Committee members and the hundreds of thousands of people they represent were decided by a group of less than a few dozen people.
“It leaves all the current leadership in place and extends the term of everyone else, in order to keep a status quo on who is calling the shots for the Democratic Party for at least two more years,” they continued. “Also, the meeting itself was done via telephone, where no member could speak freely besides the county chairperson and municipal chairpersons. Everyone else was muted and needed to record any comments that were to be transcribed and read by the county chairperson.
“Multiple times in the meeting, people recorded comments, including Senate candidate Jason Krychiw, who is a member of the UCDC, that were said to be ‘inaudible’ and not read during the meeting. This hampered discussion so, even in what was presented as an open vote, there was little openness,” they said.
The Progressive Democrats for Legislative District 20 said they didn’t view the pandemic as an excuse to delay elections but believe the UCDC chairpersons did and are convinced Scutari and state Sen. Joseph P. Cryan of Union are exploiting this situation to undermine democracy and hold on to their power for a while longer.
“Other counties in the state had county committee elections last year, and the ones that delayed them are holding them this year,” they said. “What makes Union County different from the other counties that have done this or already are planning to do this? This pandemic has been extremely tough on a lot of people, and, rather than focus on helping the state recover from it, local party chairpersons such as Nick Scutari and Joe Cryan are exploiting it to undermine democracy and hold onto their seats of power.”
Krychiw, Heath and Castenada said they are exploring multiple ways to respond, both electoral and legal, but insist the easiest way to prevent this in the future is to vote on Tuesday, June 8, in the primaries, before those in power try to undermine those, too.
According to Union County clerk Joanne Rajoppi, the Republican County Committee delayed elections for two years in the same manner as the Democrats due to COVID, following a vote and change of their bylaws.
“What happened is, clerk Rajoppi sent a letter to both myself and the Democratic chairman, Sen. Scutari, requesting it because … it was a task that they said they would have great difficulty in accomplishing, and I do believe it,” Republican County Chairperson Glenn Mortimer said on Friday, Feb. 19. “ I’m a fan of in-person voting myself and not so much by mail, but I believe that the clerk came to me in all honesty and earnest.”
In the letter Rajoppi sent to both parties, she said that to conduct a machine ballot election in such a primary would be entirely different from conducting a vote-by-mail election. In a machine ballot election, the printer prints the various ballots, which are then placed in coinciding machines for each district. In a vote-by-mail election, on the other hand, she said her staff will be collating 431 different ballots with additional ballot versions based on state legislative districts. For the Democratic Party, this could mean close to 500 different ballots.
“It would be a Herculean task to collate such a large number of ballots, doing so in a careful way,” she said in the letter. “While I have a wonderful, dedicated staff, I am not sure even they could perform such a feat in a very limited time frame. Additionally, there is a space concern, in terms of housing so many different ballots in an organized, secure place.”
Mortimer sided with Rajoppi in making the call, which resulted in the Republicans also delaying their elections.
“It’s a technological hiccup that they would have, and it would be a very hard task to do, and it would be very hard to accomplish this,” Mortimer said. “So, I called around the state to see what some other counties were doing — I called our state party, and, eventually, we had a meeting of our chairpersons. There were 13 to 14 of us that participated in that meeting. We went through the pros and cons of doing this and … it was delayed another year. Our election was delayed last year as well, due to the pandemic and having no way of figuring out how to vote at that time, so we delayed ours.”
Last year, people would have had to go door-to-door, find their neighbors to sign their petitions to participate in the election, and no one was opening the door in April and May, due to COVID-19,” he continued. “That’s how we got to where we are. Like everyone else in this country, we prefer that the pandemic ends — we can go back to living our lives in person and having an election in a voting booth.”
Mortimer said he believes Rajoppi acted in good faith.
“To remedy this, everyone should get the vaccine. The sooner, the better,” he added.
In a Feb. 22 statement sent by AJ Stewart, Cryan’s campaign manager, Cryan addressed the extension of County Committee terms.
“I trust in the process governed by the bylaws of the County Committee,” Cryan wrote. “In accordance with those bylaws, the members of the County Committee voted to extend the terms with a 95-percent approval. A majority of members of a democratically elected County Committee participated in the vote and overwhelmingly approved the extension.”