Election Day in New Jersey: Polls Open at 6 A.M. and Close at 8 P.M. — the Morning Checklist Before You Vote
Tuesday is the day itself: a Senate seat and all 12 House seats are on New Jersey's ballot, polls run 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., and mail ballots are due at the same hour the polls close.
It is Election Day in New Jersey. Polls across the state open at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, November 3, and close at 8 p.m., and the ballot carries a United States Senate seat and all 12 of the state's seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, alongside county and local offices. Voters who are in line at their assigned polling place when the polls close at 8 p.m. stay in line and vote — the close applies to joining the line, not to voters already in it.
Mail voters have the same deadline as everyone else. A mail-in ballot can be returned in person to a county Board of Elections office or placed in one of the county's secure drop boxes until 8 p.m. Tuesday; a ballot sent by mail is counted if it is postmarked by Election Day and arrives inside the state's receipt window. A mail ballot cannot be returned to a polling place on Election Day — polling places accept only voters voting in person, and a voter who brings a completed mail ballot to the polls will be directed to the county options instead.
Nationally, Tuesday decides control of Congress for the final two years of the president's term: Democrats need a net gain of four seats in each chamber against Republican majorities of 218 to 214 in the House and 53 to 47 in the Senate, according to Reuters' Election Day guide, and the Justice Department is deploying about 1,000 election monitors nationwide. In New Jersey, results on election night come from the 21 counties, not from the state — the Division of Elections posts no election-night results of its own.
