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Politics & Government

Freeholder Battle Exposes Underbelly of Elections

Close-call race, court battle and signs of fraud have lawmakers looking to clean up election laws.

Everybody does it.

Until this summer, that was a common political defense. It was used to justify any number of edge-of-the-law practices used by numerous candidates for public office.

But since Superior Court Assignment Judge Thomas Weisenbeck ruled in September that William "Hank" Lyon of Montville was not the Republican nominee for Morris County freeholder—even though ballot counts appeared to show him a handful of votes ahead of incumbent Margaret Nordstrom in the GOP primary—the "everybody does it" defense might become a harder sell.

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If Assemblyman Michael Carroll of Morris Township has his way, the Legislature will take up bills he is preparing to boost the effectiveness of the state's election laws, and to end the the vote-by-mail practice at the heart of one of the issues on the Lyon-Nordstrom election.

This week, Patch explores the changing face of Morris County's Republican party in 'Morris GOP: 2011.' Check back throughout the week for more, and return next week for "Morris Democrats: 2011."

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The three-week trial lifted the rug and exposed some of the election practices that are commonly known, but rarely discussed in polite society.

Weisenbeck overturned Tea Party-affiliated Lyon's 4-vote victory over the more established Nordstrom, and ordered the Morris County Republican Committee to hold a special election to determine the party's nominee to face Democrat Truscha Quattrone in November. When it did, Nordstrom took a narrow win of her own.

Questions of who really won the GOP primary began immediately after the election. Initial counts showed Lyon up by 10. But further review, including a recount and the addition of two disputed votes to Nordstrom's total, narrowed the gap to 4.

And things got really hairy when Nordstrom filed an election contest that triggered a three-week trial. Testimony was presented about 32 illegal votes in Parsippany, as well as about a $16,000 contribution to the Lyon that violated campaign finance rules and wasn't properly reported to the state's election agency.

In his ruling, Weisenbeck agreed with the argument put forth by Nordstrom's attorney Alan Zakin: the election was too tainted to be allowed to stand.

Nordstrom was nominated by the county committee by five votes.

And with just weeks to go until the general election, the saga isn't even over. Lyon has appealed Weisenbeck's ruling to the state court's appeallate division, which has yet to rule.

The appeals court did, however, turn down multiple requests by Lyon for an emergent ruling overturning Weisenbeck's decision. Ballots listing Nordsrom as the Republican nominee have been prepared and mailed.

Freeholder Director William Chegwidden said it was about time to clean up the election laws.

"Over time it will have an effect," he said. "The judge's decision promoted the idea that breaking the rules will have an impact. It's time to put teeth in the Election Law Enforcement Commission."

Carroll, of the 25th Legislative District, said he is preparing legislation to fix the issues that the trial raised. One bill would rewrite the mandate to give New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission the necessary powers to act in a timely manner when such allegations as seen the in Lyon-Nordstrom case become evident.

"This case will have an impact," Carroll said. "ELEC rules should be tougher."

Carroll also objected to the idea that it was a judge, Weisenbeck, who made the ruling to overturn the election. The decision to overturn an election should be up to ELEC, he said.

But that was the problem in this case, he agreed, because ELEC is a fact-finding deliberative body that often issues rulings years after the alleged offenses have occurred.

That was the case of former Acting Gov. Donald DeFrancesco, who was recently fined by ELEC for campaign contribution violations in the 2000 election.

Nordstrom said she was aware of ELEC taking up to five years to issue a ruling.

Such a decision, Weisenbeck ruled in the Lyon-Nordstrom case, would not have provided the remedy sought. He ruled that ELEC did not have jurisdiction in the case because it was a primary election, not a general election, and the outcome had implications for the general election.

Weisenbeck also said that under ELEC rules, the commission can only overturn an election if it is found that a candidate received at least $50,000 in illegal contributions and the violation had a significant impact on the outcome of the election.

Such a resolution was not available in the Lyon-Nordstrom election because the illegal contribution was only $16,000, and it was a primary election, the judge ruled.

Jeff Brindle, ELEC's executive director, said the commission has never invoked that section of a 1993 election law rewrite.

Lyon's attorney, Sean Connelly, had argued that Lyon made the contribution himself from funds tied to a share in a family corporation. But the campaign finance reports showed the contribution came from his father, Robert Lyon, who was the campaign's treasurer.

Connelly further argued that as a first time candidate, Hank Lyon misunderstood the campaign contribution rules.

Weisenbeck rejected both arguments.

"It can not be argued that [Lyon's] conduct in reading the manual once in January 2011, five months before the first Form R-1 was due, was an 'accidental miscalculation' or 'other reasonable cause of like nature,'" the judge wrote. "Nor, under these circumstances does it reflect a 'good faith' effort to comply with the election laws."

Weisenbek said the contribution issue was "neither trivial or unimportant. The nature of the omission was most significant."

The $16,000 represented 79 percent of the Lyon's campaign funds, and allowed the candidate to issue a mailer disparaging Nordstrom's record on open space preservation to 25,000 homes. Nordstrom had testified that because her review of Lyon's late campaign finance reports indicted her opponent had $636 in the bank, she pulled back her efforts to issue a late mailer, which she would have done if the reports had said Lyon had more money to spend.

"The fact remains that [Lyon's] failure to file the 48-hour report materially impacted [Nordstrom's] campaign strategy to her significant disadvantage," Weisenbeck said.

The other key issue was the testimony of 32 illegal ballots cast by Parsippany residents.

Carroll and Republican County Committee chairman John Sette said that fraud was evident in this case.

Sette said that under the state's vote-by-mail law, county board of election workers examine voters' forms requesting vote-by-mail ballots, the envelopes that contain the ballots, and the ballots themselves.

Each ballot is examined by one Republican and one Democrat, and each ballot and envelope should have six initials, three in blue for the Democrat and three in red for the Republican.

Sette said the examination of the ballots showed that there was fraud. He said, too, that it was clear that neither Lyon, Nordstrom nor any of the Parsippany candidates seeking local office had a role in the ballot tampering.

Both Sette and Carroll said they expect either the county prosecutor's office or the state Attorney General to examine the case.

The current vote-by-mail system was enacted in 2009, when legislation intended to simplify and streamline the system was signed by Gov. Jon Corzine.

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