Nearly a year ago to the day, in a Teaneck lodge full of Republican voters, Jack Ciattarelli was working to undo GOP distrust of elections. Now, as Ciattarelli seeks the governorship, President Donald Trump has hinted at reopening those wounds with a declaration of war on mail-in voting, a major voting method in New Jersey.
The August 2024 meet-and-greet highlighted Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw and congressional candidate Mary Jo Guinchard, but Ciattarelli, the evening’s host, spent several minutes defending the legitimacy of the electoral process. Even while investigations and rulings across the country found Trump had no evidence to back his claims that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was fraudulent, a main concern among Republicans in the room was election security, including mail-in voting.
Ciattarelli’s support for vote-by-mail isn’t boundless — he’s said he wants to strengthen identity confirmation policies and make other adjustments to the law — but he encouraged attendees that day to track their ballot’s status using the state’s online tool and reiterated that no systemic fraud has been discovered in the electoral system. More than anything else, he told the Republicans in the room not to let fears of a broken system get in the way of registering their vote.
“What I always say when we get to this kind of discussion is, let’s not — particularly as Republicans — psych ourselves out,” Ciattarelli said at the town hall. “Okay, let’s not go into thinking that they’ve got us already beat, right?”
That sentiment was national — Republican strategists spent millions of dollars last year turning out low-frequency mail voters. The efforts helped lead to “almost universal gains” for Republicans in vote-by-mail, according to the New York Times. Trump, of course, re-ascended to the Oval Office with the GOP’s first popular vote victory since 2004.
Ciattarelli is once again his party’s nominee for governor, looking to embrace any edge that could push him across the finish line in November. But Trump’s disavowal of mail voting threatens to sow further distrust in elections among Republicans just months before Election Day in Jersey.
Trump, who never fully discarded his distaste for mail-in voting and said throughout the 2024 campaign that he supports single-day voting, escalated his attacks against the voting method in a Monday social media post. In his post, he said he will lead a movement to end mail-in voting and that he would sign an executive order to bring “honesty” to the 2026 midterms. Without the text of the order, which he said is still being written, it’s unclear whether it could attempt to affect this November’s elections in the Garden State.
“Elections can never be honest with mail in ballots/voting, and everybody, in particular the Democrats, knows this,” the president claimed in his post.
Legal experts have said Congress, not the president, controls election policy. They’ve said such an executive order, which Trump said could bar voting machines he claims are inaccurate, would likely face legal challenges, which would take time to sort out in court.
A spokesperson from the governor’s office told the New Jersey Globe on Tuesday that mail-in voting in the state is secure and effective.
“For decades, mail-in ballots have been a reliable voting method that has made it more convenient for eligible New Jersey voters of all parties to participate in the democratic process,” said Murphy spokesperson Toral Patel. “We have no plans to change our approach for the upcoming election.”
About 800,000 New Jerseyans voted by mail in the 2024 general election, or about 19% of all votes cast. Nearly 600,000 New Jerseyans cast their vote via mail in the 2021 gubernatorial election, accounting for 22.5% of votes.
In a statement to the New Jersey Globe, Ciattarelli campaign manager Eric Arpert said the campaign is working with New Jersey’s Republican Party and the Republican National Committee to ensure this year’s election is “marked by integrity.”
“As Governor, Jack will fight to enact new election integrity laws that include common sense Voter ID requirements — which are supported by the vast majority of voters — to ensure NJ elections are as fair and secure as possible,” Arpert said. “Jack wants all NJ voters who already plan to cast their ballots by mail this year to be fully confident they can do so.”
On his website, Ciattarelli says he hopes to remodel New Jersey’s vote-by-mail laws after Florida’s. The Sunshine State requires ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. Ciattarelli has also said he would sign legislation creating a voter fraud task force to investigate and prosecute incidents of voter fraud in the state.
Democrats are more likely to utilize mail voting, while Republicans are more likely to vote in-person on Election Day. In 2024, Democrats returned about 460,000 mail-in ballots, compared to 160,000 for Republicans. Though it’s thinned in recent years, Democrats have a built-in voter registration advantage, and Republicans cannot afford the gap to widen. Early, in-person voting is closer to even, with about 420,000 Democrats and 400,000 Republicans participating in 2024.
Ciattarelli hasn’t embraced the baseless allegations of election fraud that have become a Trump calling card. In 2021, after his 3-point loss to Murphy in that year’s race for governor, Ciattarelli brushed aside conspiracy theories about the election and insisted the results were fair and accurate.
At an event promoting Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) and bashing Ciattarelli, the Democratic nominee for governor, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) called Trump’s derision of vote-by-mail a distraction from issues like the dissolution of USAID.
“Republicans believe that they can’t win an election if there’s not a rigging that takes place,” she said. “And so when we listen to his rhetoric, we must recognize that this is all about the suppression of the vote and not the opportunity for everyone to vote.”
Trump’s campaign and administration have challenged New Jersey’s election laws before. In 2020, a federal judge ruled against the Trump campaign’s legal challenge of a Murphy executive order that sent mail ballots to all registered voters in the state, a COVID-era action. Earlier this year, acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba established an elections integrity task force that would seek to enforce Trump’s executive orders on the matter. Trump has pushed states to reject mail-in votes received after Election Day; New Jersey allows counting up to six days later, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.
The post As Trump attacks mail voting, Ciattarelli says the system can be trusted appeared first on New Jersey Globe.
