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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Okay. One question quiz. What's the difference between Vice President Mike Pence and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy? Well, one difference is that last week after Murphy's Deputy Chief of Staff Michael DeLamater tested positive for the Coronavirus, Governor Murphy went into quarantine. We know that Mike Pence is not going into quarantine. He's continuing to campaign. In fact, even though his chief of staff and four other people around him tested positive the other day.

The local context, there has been an alarming surge in Coronavirus infections statewide. in the Garden State on Saturday, Jersey recorded its highest single-day case totals dince the beginning of May. Now all of this is happening with, of course, just eight days to go until Election Day, eight days left in the voting season, and one last week of early voting in New Jersey case. Because New Jersey is one of those States that President Trump rails against that has sent actual ballots to every registered voter. Joining me now to talk about the pandemic and the vote in the great state of New Jersey is Nancy Solomon, managing editor for New Jersey Public Radio, WNYC. Hey Nancy. Welcome back to the show.

Nancy: Hi, thanks, Brian.

Brian: How did Governor Murphy get exposed again?

Nancy: Right. You mentioned Mike DeLamater. He was at a private social function a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night, they were out for drinks with staff, people from the campaign, a small group, and the deputy chief of staff stopped by apparently, I'm told for about 15, 20 minutes. It wasn't considered a close contact. I imagine he was at the other end of the table but it was a contact. Of course, you heard Murphy and his wife, Tammy quarantining.

Initially, also his Communications Senior Advisor Dan Brian had tested positive at that same time and he went into quarantine, but then he got two negative tests following that.

It really looks like it was only one test in the governor's office. The whole staff of the office, some nearly 200 people were all tested in the following couple of days and all of those came back negative. It wasn't a major outbreak on his staff as it started to look like I could go in that direction when it was first announced.

Brian: What a contrast in modeling for the general public's behavior between Phil Murphy and Mike Pence. I want to ask you about the state experiencing a surge in cases.

In general, I'm looking at stats last week. Hospitalizations had a three-month high, according to nj.com. New Jersey is not one of the states where cases are the highest per capita, but how bad is it getting?

Nancy: It's troubling. Saturday was a real spike. We don't know if it's now going to start trending up, but it was almost 2,000 reported positive tests. On Sunday, yesterday, it was 1,140. It's been over 1,000 for about a week now. That's to compare to, it was about 300 every day during the summer. That was considered pretty good. Now we're back to where we were as you said in early May and it's troubling. There were a few bright spots in all of this. There are fewer hospitalizations, fewer deaths, but it's still quite troubling.

Brian: The last time you were on the show, Nancy, we talked about the extremely high positivity rates in Lakewood in that area in particular with a large Hasidic population, similar to what was going on in parts of Brooklyn, Rockland, and Orange counties in New York. Is there evidence that those high positivity rates statewide now, were precipitated by the new surgeon cases locally and they spread out? Is there any evidence that the president's infamous fundraiser in Bedminster, when he was positive at the time, but didn't disclose that he might be and held this indoor event or partially indoor event actually became a super spreader event? What can we tell about the source of what's going on statewide now?

Nancy: When health officials talk about what's going on and what the causes are, they mention all of what you just mentioned, but as a cumulative effect, not this one outbreak then spread across the state. It's not a simple, "This is patient zero," or whatever. You have what began in September with college campus outbreaks and the outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood. Then there were also and have been ongoing a series of private parties, private indoor gatherings, weddings. That's what officials talk about the most.

That's what they're most concerned about, are these private gatherings, whether it's young people or not young people, people of all ages. They believe that that's the biggest driver of all of these things. There've been 25 outbreaks at schools. We've got a mixed system going on in New Jersey. Some schools are back in person, some are remote, some are mixed, both remote and back in person. You have 111 cases as of today that have been linked to school outbreaks. It's all of those things really.

Brian: New Jersey's COVID infection rate is now high enough to land it a spot on New York's travel advisory list, which would normally mean that anybody traveling from New Jersey to New York would have to self-quarantine for 14 days, but Governor Cuomo did not add New Jersey to the list in that way because he knows it's just unrealistic. The states are just too integrated in terms of work and family, but he did ask people to not travel between the two states unless it's really necessary. Do you have any indication? Is there any way to even measure journalistically, whether anybody's adhering to that?

Nancy: I don't have any way to measure that. I would just add that Governor Murphy also made the same request of New Jersey residents, "Don't leave the state unless it's essential. If you work in New York, and you need to go, that's one thing, but don't leave the state if you don't need to."

Brian: All right. Let's turn to voting and New Jerseyans. Now we're going to open up the phones for you. We took phone calls from New York state, early voters, last half hour. Now we're going to open up the phones for anybody in New Jersey who has voted already. I know it's universal, mail-in balloting in New Jersey. Did you mail it in? How did that feel? You may not have the scene that we heard in the previous segment that New Yorkers have been experiencing since early voting in person began in New York state on Saturday, but what's it been like for you? How has this absentee ballot, it's not even an absentee ballot, it's universal mail-in ballot, going in your experience New Jersey voters?

646-435-7280. Call and tell us your story or ask any question. Nancy Solomon, managing editor for New Jersey Public Radio and WNYC. Nancy as calls are coming in, I see that last week, New Jersey's early vote total topped 2 million, according to state election data. Well, tell us what's going on. Is there any in-person manifestation of this?

Nancy: The only in-person manifestation is if you were to stand at a drop box, so you can mail your ballot, but you can also put it in an election secure drop box. There are a minimum of 10 in every county. You could, and I've seen one story of a reporter who did just this. I'm trying to remember where I read it, maybe in the Philly Inquirer, but you could stand at a drop box and see people coming up, but that's about it.

As of Friday, 2.26 million people had already cast their ballots by either mail or drop box. That's 37% of all the ballots that were mailed out. Even more interestingly, and this goes to something you were talking about with Amber Phillips at the top of the show, 55%, that number is 55% of the total 2016 turnout, which was a record-breaking turnout for New Jersey. More than half of the number of people who voted in 2016 have already voted eight days before the election. Then the other interesting stat on this is that the number of Democrats is double the number of Republicans so far of who has already voted, which is not terribly surprising because pretty much is a reflection of how many more Democrats there are in New Jersey. It's a little bit higher than that. The return rate for Democrats is 45% and the return rate for Republicans is 41%, and then there are 500,000 people who have voted already who were unaffiliated.

Brian: Oh, New York listeners back off if you're calling in or if you're holding on since the last segment, New Jersey's turn now. If you're on hold or if you're trying to reach us from New York come on now. I know how we, New Yorkers can be. Let New Jersey people in. 646-435-7280. New Jersey listeners, what are your lingering voting questions for Nancy Solomon from New Jersey Public Radio and WNYC? Have you come up against any issues you didn't foresee? Or do you have an early voting experience to share that other listeners might appreciate hearing before they go to vote? 646-435-7280.

I want to bring the Trump angle into this for just a second, Nancy. Every single registered voter in New Jersey received a ballot by mail or at least, they were supposed to, and that led to the Trump administration filing a lawsuit against the state as part of their campaign against universal mail-in voting. You reported that a federal judge tossed that lawsuit out, but is there anything more the Trump administration can do to contest universal voting by mail?

Nancy: They could appeal that that was a district court judge ruling, a federal district court of New Jersey, so they could appeal it to the circuit. They could continue to appeal it.

There is a suspicion that this is part of a much longer game for them, that they intend to challenge the election results after Election Day, and that this is part of laying the groundwork for that, but as far as the ruling goes, it completely dismissed the case. There is nothing now standing in the way of New Jersey voters casting their ballot, that much is true.

Brian: Is there going to be in-person voting on Election Day, at least like normal? Is that an option?

Nancy: Yes. I wouldn't go so far as to say like normal. You have to say, you have to give Governor Phil Murphy a little credit here because back when he made the decision to go towards universal mail-in balloting, which was a huge turning of the ship for all the county clerks and county election bureaus, he made the decision back in the summer. One of his main concerns that he expressed was that by November, we could be in a second surge of the Coronavirus because of the cold weather. That had been something that had been predicted and he's looking pretty right about that at the moment.

This whole point was to try to lower the numbers of people going to the polls. Now what you have, there will be polls open, every town has one. In many cases for most people, it's not going to be your regular place that you go. It will be somewhere else, so you should check online and get the address, but the polls will be open and at the poll, you can do two things. You can deliver your mail-in ballot or you can fill out a paper provisional ballot.

Now in normal years, paper provisional ballots are only used when you show up to vote and there's some problem with your ability to vote. You're not on the rolls. They don't have you. They don't like your signature, whatever. You can still fill out a paper ballot and then that ballot, after all the votes are tallied, then they look at the provisional ballots, they count them, but they check to make sure that there wasn't another vote submitted by that voter.

This year they're going to count all the mail-in ballots, and that could take until November 10th, I'm sorry to say. They must count everything that arrives by November 10th and if it doesn't have a postmark, there'll be two extra days, 48 hours after Election Day that they will count those ballots. Then they'll go into a zone for those last five days of the week where they will count ballots that were postmarked. Before they can count the provisional ballots, they've got to do that. It creates a delay, but it's a perfectly valid fine way to vote and your vote will be counted.

Brian: It just might not be counted until a week after Election Day, and it's not really going to matter in New Jersey where it's probably enough of an automatically blue state that they'll be able to project a winner on Election Day anyway, I imagine. This is one thing, listeners, to keep your eye on when you're starting to follow the national results here or elsewhere on election night. Pennsylvania just won that case in the Supreme Court that allows them to receive early mail-in ballots up to three days after Election Day as long as they're postmarked by Election Day.

In Michigan, they're talking about two weeks, the key swing state of Michigan and that's being fought over in court, but Michigan wants to be able to count absentee ballots two weeks after Election Day, as long as they're postmarked by Election Day. Just a sign of possible things to come starting a week from tomorrow, November 3rd. Jim in West Windsor, you're on WNYC. Hi Jim.

Jim: Good morning, Brian. I'll give you an example of what you were just talking about as far as the mail. My ballot was supposedly put in the mail on the 7th of October, it was postmarked the ninth and I didn't receive it until Friday, which was the 23rd.

Brian: That's the absentee ballot being mailed by the state to you?

Jim: Correct.

Brian: Then did you turn it around already? Go ahead. No, you go.

Jim: Friday was the last day that we could apply for a mail-in ballot. I have to really give it to the county clerk and the elected officials. I left a message on her voicemail, wrote them an email, they were back to me immediately and stepped me through the process to get a second mail-in ballot.

Brian: What do you mean apply for a mail-in ballot? I thought everybody in New Jersey is being sent one automatically if you're a registered voter.

Jim: Correct. I'm wondering how the post office is really going to deal with this. They took the mail-in ballot.

Brian: It took all that time to reach you, Jim, thank you very much for that troubling phone call. Nancy, are you hearing other stories like this?

Nancy: Yes, there've been a ton of these. There is an election protection hotline and the election land project of ProPublica and the league of women voters who are all tracking these, and we're helping, assisting people who were waiting to try to get their ballots. Some of these ballots are arriving late and people can still have plenty of time to get them back. If for any reason you don't get your ballot, then you could go vote on Election Day. That is the way the system is set up. That is the fail-safe.

Folks who don't have their ballots yet, you might still get it in the next few days, and if you don't go vote on Election Day at your local polling place, there is one other option. You can go to your county election bureau or the county clerk's office and you can request them a mail ballot there. You'll get it in your hand at that moment. You can fill it out and submit it right then and there, or you can take it home and submit it later. There are these two ways now you can deal with that, but yes, the deadline has passed to get one mailed to you.

Brian: Let's take Anne in Morristown next who dropped off her ballot in a drop box. Anne you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Anne: Hey, Brian. First of all, I just want to fangirl crush a little bit. I love your show and I think you guys are doing a great job.

Brian: Thank you.

Anne: I just wanted to give you my experience, but I also have a question. We got our ballots a few weeks ago. My husband got his the week before I did. We filled them out, we drove into Morristown, we found parking, which is always hard to do in Morristown, we dropped our ballots in the box, in front of the courthouse and then we registered online to track our ballots. About three days later, I saw that my ballot had been received, so I figure everything's good. I think the system was working well. The question that I have for Nancy is, let's say someone wants to cheat the system, they fill out a ballot, they send it in, and then they show up on pulling data vote, how is it that the state is keeping two votes for being counted?

Nancy: This is why the provisional ballots that are cast on Election Day at your polling place will be counted last. They're going to count all the mail-in ballots. Those don't get counted by hand. They get processed by hand, but then they're scanned. They have an electronic record of everyone who has voted. The provisional ballots will be checked against that list.

Brian: Anne, thank you for the nice words. Thank you for your call. It's the opposite of so many other states where the election day ballots are going to be counted first, and then they'll wait sometimes a few days as we were discussing before for all the absentee ballots to come in and get tallied. In New Jersey, they're going to count the mail-in ballots first and only after that, are they going to count the paper ballots that people fill out on Election Day?

Nancy: Right.

Brian: Very interesting.

Nancy: They're starting to count already, so it's not going to be quite as bad as it sounds except that they are going to have to wait for the last ballots to dribble in, but they're counting now. There was a provision passed that they could start counting 10 days early so that day was Saturday. They're counting now. Essentially, everything is going into the scanner and it's already. It won't be reported out until Election Night after the polls close at eight. The bulk of it is going to be there, but there is going to be this bump that's going to come through on that last week. That's why a lot of people are saying, "We should be talking about Election Week, not Election Day."

Brian: That's right. 50 States, 50 systems. North Carolina, a big swing state, their polls close at 7:30 on Election Night. They will, at that time, as I understand, announce the early voting totals, including the mail-in ballot totals because they are allowed to count beforehand these mail-in ballots in North Carolina. We may have an early indication of a very key swing state when those polls close at 7:30 on Election Night.

Other states are entirely different, where they're not allowed to start counting the absentee ballots until all the in-person voting on Election Day is done. 50 States, 50 systems. We're going to try to keep our eye on 50 balls in the air at once for us. By the way, listeners, in case you're interested, we'll be doing an Election Night special. Anticipating that this is not going to be a one-night thing perhaps, we're going to be doing, A Night After Election Night special. Just a little heads up on that.

Nancy: Brian.

Brian: Yes, Nancy.

Nancy: In New Jersey, I don't think there's any chance that Joe Biden doesn't win New Jersey. New Jersey is not a swing state. It's got a heck of a lot more Democrats in it. He's going to win, but there are several close congressional races that really matter, and those races are largely going to be determined on the coattails of the presidential race.

To the extent that those races will be close and we are going to have to wait probably for results on those.

Nancy: Good point. Also, there are ballot questions like legalizing recreational marijuana, where there's not an immediate outcome from that, but people are going to have to wait to find out the results. That could be a close call, a contested election, even if the presidential is not. One more call. Tom in Sea Bright, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Speaker 3T: Hello, thanks for taking my call. I'm concerned about many things and I didn't mention to your screener. I don't know how there isn't going to be a lot of problems. Murphy set up a whole new system. The ballots aren't really easy to understand. You have to read them a few times, but my main concern was, I live in Monmouth County, and in New Jersey, these are like little [unintelligible 00:23:55] 21 counties, and this is a very Republican County. I basically don't trust the Republican woman, the county clerk who runs the election board. I didn't trust to drop it in the mail or to put it in one of the boxes. I went there the first day, I got it to the election office and there was a very long line. It took about a half-hour to get it and I'm sure it's died down by now, but I just don't trust what's going to happen to it once they get it.

Brian: I'm going to leave it there, Tom, because we're running out of time, but Nancy, maybe Tom is an indication that distrust of universal mail-in balloting isn't just a Republican thing. It runs both ways.

Nancy: Oh, I agree 100% that there's a ton of concern out there, that people are nervous about mailing their ballots. There was all that stuff about the post office a month ago and that they might not be able to handle this and that their funding was cut. That's why there was a big bump in the drop boxes, an effort to get more drop boxes. In terms of this anxiety and just in terms of the Monmouth County Clerk, I will just say that the elections board is made up of two Republicans and two Democrats in every county and they're in the room monitoring it all times, so that's that thing.

Then in terms of the anxiety about voting, I talked to Jesse Burns at the New Jersey League of Women Voters on Friday, and she said every election year they're flooded with questions, calls, concerns, and anxieties. Usually, it's about the machines, this year it's about the mail-in ballots, but she has a lot of faith in the system. She worked very closely to get this system up and running. To do it well, we had two practices. We had an election in May and an election in July. She's a big booster of it. She thinks it's going to work fine, and she's encouraging anyone who's feeling anxiety, just go vote on Election Day with a provisional ballot. Your vote will be counted.

Brian: To the president's concerns or attempts to sow doubt, let's say, what's to stop people from making a lot of photocopies of mail-in ballots and mailing them in, or doing other things that he says people can do with universal mail-in balloting? We don't know that some are going to people who are recently deceased or who have moved, and then somebody receiving those ballots and could conceivably mail them in.

Nancy: Twitter is full of these, of people talking about this. "I got a ballot for my deceased husband in the mail." The fact is, and this is what election officials say, it's not fraud until you sign the ballot, you cast the ballot in somebody else's name that's not your ballot. That's voting fraud. The fact that the ballot came because a person is still on the rolls is not fraud.

Then the other thing is, the other side, they tend to reject ballots. For instance, they checked very closely, the signature match and they reject some that are the real signature. There's what's called a cure process, people should keep an eye out on their mail and look for a letter from their election department questioning whether they are really the person who voted and they get a chance to cure that problem. So far the system seems to air much more on the side of rejecting voters' ballots than it does on the side of fraudulent ballots.

Brian: By the way, what's your dog's name?

Nancy: [laughs] Of course she would be barking right now. That's Opal. She is the cutest dog in the world. Just saying.

Brian: Hi, Opal, good dog, Opal. Another K9 makes a radio appearance on the Brian Lehrer show. WNYC and New Jersey Public Radio managing editor, Nancy Solomon. Nancy, thanks so much.

Nancy: Thanks, Brian.

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