Early Voting in New Jersey Ends at 6 p.m. Today: The Three Ways Left to Cast a Ballot After the Sites Close
In-person early voting closes at 6 p.m. Sunday at sites in all 21 counties. After that, a New Jersey voter's options narrow to a county-clerk errand on Monday, a drop box or mailbox by Tuesday — and Election Day itself.
The early-voting era of the 2026 election ends at 6 p.m. today. Sites across all 21 New Jersey counties, open since October 24, take their last in-person early ballots at 6 p.m. Sunday, with no appointment needed and any registered voter able to use any designated site in their own county, according to NorthJersey.com's final-day report read by this desk. Anyone in line or inside at closing is voting early for the last time this cycle; everyone else moves to the remaining routes.
Two of those routes run through the mail ballot. A voter who does not yet have one can still obtain a mail ballot in person from their county clerk until 3 p.m. on Monday, November 2. A ballot being returned by mail must be postmarked by Election Day and received by the county board of elections within six days after — by November 9 — while a ballot placed in a secure drop box, or hand-delivered to the county Board of Elections office, must arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day itself. A mail ballot cannot be returned to an Election Day polling place; that rule has caught voters before and will again on Tuesday.
And then there is the original route: Tuesday, November 3, polls open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at each voter's assigned polling place. Between the 6 p.m. close tonight and the 8 p.m. close Tuesday, every legal path to a counted ballot runs through one of those doors — the clerk's office by Monday at 3, a drop box or a postmark by Tuesday, or the polling place on the day. Pick one and finish it; in a state where more than 950,000 ballots were already cast before this weekend ended, the remaining margin is exactly the voters who assume there is still time later. There is — but it is measured in hours now, not weeks.
