Timothy Hoffman States Miscounted Vote By Mail And Provisional Ballots
May Have Resulted in Inaccurate Final Count

HACKENSACK, NJ (April 26, 2019)–Hackensack Board of Education Vice President Timothy Hoffman has issued the following statement regarding his recount petition filing for the April 16, 2019 school board election.

“This morning, I filed a petition in Superior Court requesting a full recount of all ballots in last week’s Board of Education election, with the hopes that the process will provide the community with full faith and confidence that every vote cast was properly counted. By April 17, one day after the election, several media outlets had posted inconsistent vote totals, and both the Hackensack City and Bergen County clerks had reported different numbers for at least one district and the overall unofficial total.

As we have seen on both a national and local level, it is important for each citizen to have confidence in our elections. My stake in asking for a recount is first as a citizen of Hackensack and believer that every vote should be properly counted. There is currently a razor-thin five-vote margin between the third and fourth place finishers in this election. In comparison to last year, over three times as many paper vote by mail and provisional ballots were cast in this election, all of which were subject to human error and inadvertent mishandling. Given those facts, and the aforementioned inconsistencies, it is necessary that the results be given another look.

This is a matter of public interest and importance. Our community deserves to have clarity and confidence that the candidates they chose as Board Trustees are the ones who have the honor of serving the community for the next three years. All of the candidates who ran, and the nearly 2000 residents who engaged in this electoral process, are not only owed a swift resolution, but also an accurate one.”