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Their numbers were small, but the 150 New Jersey Army National Guard Soldiers who were mobilized to support the state’s primary election had an outsized impact, helping officials to process more than 370,000 votes.
That tally was compiled as the Soldiers finished the historic mission that began with the election on July 7 and continued with the Soldiers – dressed in civilian clothes - working alongside election officials in a half dozen counties until July 24.
“It was a historic effort and I think it was a great opportunity for a lot of Soldiers to get an inside look at how elections work and for a lot of election officials to understand what the National Guard is about,” said Capt. Clinton Bradley, the officer who led the mission.
The state active-duty mission came in response to concerns about a shortage of poll workers and volunteers due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak. Maj. Gen. Jemal J. Beale, The Adjutant General, said the Guard's election effort was an extension of its broader response to the coronavirus, which has included the mobilization of more than 100 soldiers at three Veterans Memorial Homes run by the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.
As the primary approached, one election official conceded she was apprehensive about using the National Guard at first because she knew little about the organization.
But Linda von Nessi, Clerk of the Essex County Board of Elections, said her worries evaporated as soon as the Soldiers arrived.
“From the minute they got there, their hands were out to help and all they kept asking is ‘What do you want us to do next?” von Nessi said in an interview on July 21. “They are just so respectful, nice and hard-working. I don’t want them to leave.”
The Soldiers performed a variety of tasks. On the day of the election, the Soldiers helped staff polling places and transport ballots and other election materials. In the days that followed, the Soldiers worked alongside the election officials to count provisional and mail-in ballots.
Staff Sgt. Craig Farawell, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the operation in Essex County, said in the beginning, the biggest challenge was getting to officials to understand the Soldiers were available for anything. At one point, the Soldiers heard election officials talking about retrieving more than 100 hundred large mail bins from a nearby building where ballots had been counted and returning them to the main election office across the street, an operation shorthanded officials in the past had spread out over multiple days.
“We were like ‘There’s 13 of us. We can do that in an hour or two,’ and they were like ‘Really?” Farawell said. “That helped them understand that we’re Soldiers. We solve problems.”
Although no decisions have been made about whether National Guard resources will be marshalled to help in the general election in November, officials say it remains a possibility, especially if a continuing outbreak of the virus limits the number of civilian poll workers.
That would be more than fine for Linda von Nessi, the election official in Essex County.
“They’re awesome,” she said. “They have to come back in November.”
| Date Taken: | 07.28.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 07.28.2020 09:30 |
| Story ID: | 374711 |
| Location: | NJ, US |
| Web Views: | 58 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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