The topic of potentially moving Mt. Laurel Township’s municipal elections away from November was once again discussed at the most recent Mt. Laurel Township Council meeting, with multiple residents speaking out against the idea.
Residents’ comments came in response to a discussion that began at council’s meeting two weeks prior.
It was then a resident first raised the idea of moving council elections from November as a way to allow Mt. Laurel’s residents to focus solely on municipal issues when voting for their local representatives.
Currently, Mt. Laurel’s municipal elections are partisan affairs held on the general election ballot in November of a given year.
This means elections could potentially be held at the same time as elections for referendums, boards of education, county-wide seats, the state legislature, governor, Congress and the presidency.
If Mt. Laurel was to move its municipal election from November, state law also allows for municipalities to hold non-partisan elections on the second Tuesday in May.
However, for those residents who spoke against moving local elections at council’s most recent meeting, many pointed to a potential drop in voter turnout and the added cost of holding a separate election outside of November.
One such resident was Pat Halbe, who also served as the township’s municipal clerk from 1988 through 2011, as well as township manager from 1994 to 2007.
Drawing on her experience, Halbe said most towns in New Jersey have stopped holding elections outside of November due to low turnout, including Mt. Laurel’s own local school districts and most recently Mt. Laurel Fire District No. 1.
With that, Halbe said a move from November would cause “massive confusion” for residents and it would cause “very, very low” turnout.
“I’m not in agreement with it, and having 24 years of experience doing the job of the election official, I can tell you it would cause more problems than it would solve,” Halbe said.
Also speaking was resident Harriette Cohen, who said that in her 20 years living in Mt. Laurel, no member of either major political party had ever knocked on her door to ask for her vote until current Democratic Councilman Kareem Prtichett did so when he first ran for council unsuccessfully in 2016.
As such, Cohen said she didn’t believe local municipal elections had to get lost among the other elections on the ballot.
“If you’re running for office, you have a responsibility to knock on my door. … I really would like you to think about keeping the election where it is and maybe the elected officials and candidates taking them more seriously,” Cohen said.
Another resident to speak at the meeting was Dr. Peter Bilazarian, who said he believed the idea of moving elections was “voter suppression” and similar to an unsuccessful plan supported by Democratic state Senate President Steve Sweeney in December, of which opponents said would have redrawn legislative districts in a way that would have effectively inserted gerrymandering into the state’s constitution.
In response to Bilazarian’s comments, Mt. Laurel Republican Deputy Mayor Linda Bobo said she and fellow Republicans on council had simply asked the township’s solicitor to look into the possibility of moving elections in response to the suggestion originally made by the resident who first spoke at council’s meeting several weeks ago.
“We don’t even know if it’s something that can be done, so I feel like the cart is being put before the horse a little bit here,” Bobo said.
In turn, Bilazarian said he and others speaking at the meeting wanted to “close the option off,’ which drew cheers and claps from many in attendance.
Also speaking at the meeting meeting was resident Harriet Insler, who said she found the idea of potentially moving municipal elections “suspect” and went on to describe the idea as “a ploy” to cut down on voter turnout.
“We have two extremely qualified Democrats on this council, and it disturbs me that low voter turnout may be the reason why you wish to move this to May instead of November,” Insler said.
Insler was referring to the recent election of Democrats Pritchett and Councilman Steve Steglik, who won against former Councilmembers Rich Van Noord and Dennis Riley in last November’s contest.
With that, Pritchett later echoed Insler’s comments, noting that although he first ran for council and lost in 2016, but he did not hear a discussion among the township’s elected officials of possibly moving municipal elections until after the 2018 election, when he his fellow Democrat won seats on council.
“To hear that now there’s a discussion of changing the election date, that was a problem for me,” Pritchett said. “It was a problem, and it raised many questions, and I voiced them.”
In previous comments made to The Sun, Pritchett questioned if the idea of potentially moving elections was related to the recent election of Democrats on Mt. Laurel Township Council or possibly related to him being an African-American.
For his part at last week’s meeting, Steglik also said he believed the idea of taking elections out of November would be moving backward instead of forward.
“When Kareem and I won, we talked about what we wanted to do moving forward, and I’d like to continue that as a council, not revisit election results or talk about crowd size or collusion,” Steglik said.
The next meeting of Mt. Laurel Township Council is scheduled for April 8 at 7 p.m. at the Mt. Laurel Township Municipal Building.
