How New Jersey Counts: Why Election Night Numbers Will Move, and Why the State Posts No Running Totals
New Jersey's Division of Elections does not post running results on election night at all - the counties do. And the count runs for days after Tuesday: mail ballots postmarked by 8 p.m. count if they arrive within six days, provisionals come last, and official results land around December 3.
The first thing to know about Tuesday night is where the numbers will not come from. The New Jersey Division of Elections states it plainly on its own results page, read by this desk: the Division does not post running results on election night, either official or unofficial, and the best source for election-night results is the local county websites. What the state does post, under a 2023 transparency law (P.L.2023, c.131), is each county's periodic unofficial report - how many ballots have been received, how many have been counted, and how many remain to be counted - which is the honest way to read a moving total.
The second thing to know is why the totals move. County boards are permitted to begin opening and canvassing mail-in ballots up to five days before Election Day, but no result from them can be released until the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday - so a large, lawful batch of mail votes can enter the count early in the night, on top of the in-person machine tallies from nine days of early voting and Election Day itself. After that, the tail is long by design: a mail ballot postmarked by 8 p.m. on Election Day is counted if it reaches the county Board of Elections within six days - by Monday, November 9 - and a ballot that arrives without a postmark is still counted if the Postal Service delivers it within 48 hours after the polls close and it meets the other rules.
Provisional ballots - the paper ballots given out at polling places when a voter's eligibility needs checking - are counted last, only after officials can confirm the voter did not already vote by another method, which is why they cannot be verified until the mail ballots are accounted for. Voters can follow their own ballot through the state's Track My Ballot tool. And none of it is official on election night: Vote411's New Jersey guide puts the official results at around December 3, after county canvass and state certification. Close races in New Jersey are not decided on television time; they are decided on the county clerks' schedule, and this desk will report them on that schedule.
