Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/)
The Atlantic County Clerk’s Office has received over 15,000 mail-in ballot requests for the 2018 General Election and the record number is putting pressure on the clerk’s office to confirm signatures on the ballots.
Several voters told Route 40 their signature was rejected from a mail-in absentee ballot or an in-person mail-in ballot. There have been more rejections than usual because the number of mail-in ballots is so high, said Mike Sommers, deputy county clerk.
Atlantic City Council should delay moving the state’s biggest needle exchange to a mobile unit because the move would limit access, a spokeswoman for the program said on Friday.
Anyone who lives in or around Atlantic City knows that public transit to New York is biased toward casino travelers traveling in the other direction. Greyhound charges more for a round-trip ticket starting from Atlantic City than for that same ticket starting from New York. New Jersey Transit is cheaper but only runs 12 schedules a day at not-so-convenient times.
The state AG Gurbir Grewal is going to issue new guidance for ICE detainers, replacing the old directive from 2007.
This sounds a little esoteric, but this guidance spells out how local/regional law enforcement should ask questions about immigration status and how they should handle requests from the federal level. It also deals with local officers who are deputized to do immigration stuff, which happens in Cape May and Salem Counties.
Public Meetings! The DCA tweeted out a picture of a meeting yesterday of the Atlantic City Executive Council and there were lots of local heavyweights, but not a lot of laypersons, or any media, prompting Ryan Hutchins at Politico to observe it looked like a blatant violation of the NJ Open Public Meetings Act and that the Murphy admin was essentially bragging about it. I don’t get invited to those things. Nor do I know the law, but here’s the pic. Who else used to watch Romper Room?
In national news, Amazon picked Long Island City and Crystal City, Virginia, for its new headquarters HQ2.
Am I crazy, or did they just string along a few hundred American cities for two years pretending to care about “development” or somesuch before plopping down in maybe the last two places that need development?
Everybody’s reporting that City of Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam and Councilman Jeffree Fauntleroy scuffled with some unidentified persons outside the Golden Nugget over the weekend.
Well, not everyone is reporting that. Harry Hurley’s reporting that the mayor punched a female security guard.
Mike McGarry from the Press of AC has a great story about Dan Russo, the head football coach at Vineland, where they have maybe the most beautiful high school football stadium in South Jersey (#controversial) and the strangest mascot (“Poultry Clan”).
Andy Kim declared himself the winner in the 3rd Congressional District last night after taking the lead yesterday as vote-by-mail ballots were counted.
There are still more to count, and the result’s not official, but the punditry seem to think there’s no likely way for Tom MacArthur to make up the deficit, which is about 2,600 votes. MacArthur’s not conceded.
The race between Andy Kim and Tom MacArthur for the 3rd Congressional District was still too close to call this a.m., as MacArthur had a lead of about 2,300 votes but there were still uncounted precincts in Burlington County and thousands of mail-in/provisional ballots.
Election Day is finally here. I hope, my fellow Americans, we do something inspiring, like reclaim our democracy, but I guess we’ll see.
Matt Friedman of Politico leads the Playbook with the Menendez-Hugin race, where Democrats are nervous and Hugin people say they have internal polling that shows their guy up 2 points.
“Democrats not on the Menendez campaign are convinced Hugin has a significant chance at winning,” Matt says, while noting that people talking, “about internal polls but not providing them should be treated the same as anecdotal evidence.”
The cybesecurity incident at the Galloway Township School District involved two fraudulent wire transfers of $200,000, Lynda Cohen reports.
One of them was recovered.
Third-grade teachers at Slaybaugh School in EHT dressed as a roller-coaster for Halloween and it was amazing.
Though maybe not as amazing as this one.
Happy Halloween Route 40 Roundup-ers! Hope you’re as excited about this holiday as we are, which is to say very. On this date in history in 2008, Bruce Springsteen released a song about the Jersey Devil. In realer news:
$2.13 per hour
There’s a push to raise base pay for New Jersey workers who work for tips and “generally make a baseline of as little as $2.13 per hour.” A new bill would raise that to $8.60.
Chris Franklin at NJ.com has a story on a plan to allow bonfires on the Atlantic City beaches, which for the record sounds awesome to me.
The flooding over the weekend was the worst “since Hurricane Sandy and Winter Storm Jonas,” Ventnor Emergency Management Coordinator Donna Peterson told Nanette LoBiondo.
Saturday saw some of the worst flooding in the Atlantic City area since Superstorm Sandy. We compiled some social media posts that reflected the extent of the flooding, and residents’ humor in dealing with it.