New Jersey: USPS Worker Arrested for Allegedly Dumping Mail Including Election Ballots

A U.S. Postal Service mail carrier was arrested for dumping mail, which included nearly 100 election ballots intended to be delivered to residents in West Orange, New Jersey, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

NBC 4 reports:

Nicholas Beauchene, 26, of Kearny, is charged by complaint with one count of delay, secretion, or detention of mail and one count of obstruction of mail.

The delay of mail charge is punishable by a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The obstruction of mail charge is punishable by a maximum penalty of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

According to court documents, roughly 1,875 pieces of mail – including 627 pieces of first class, 873 pieces of standard class, two pieces of certified mail, 99 general election ballots destined for residents in West Orange, and 276 campaign flyers from local candidates for West Orange Town Council and Board of Education – were recovered from dumpsters in North Arlington and West Orange on Oct. 2 and Oct. 5.

The development comes after over 6,000 voters in Teaneck, New Jersey, received mail-in ballots with the incorrect congressional district on them Monday, reports NorthJersey.com.

Fifth District voters (1,325 of them) got ballots with the 9th District race on it in the mail, while roughly 5,542 9th District ballots possessed a similar error, said Bergen County clerk John Hogan.

Out of 28,151 ballots mailed, 6,867 ballots were wrong, said Hogan.

Of course, New Jersey isn’t the only state to be plagued by ballot issues.

On Monday, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office confirmed that over 2,000 voters in Los Angeles County received “faulty” ballots that were missing the section to vote for presidential candidates.

Michael Sanchez, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County clerk’s office, issued an apology for the error and said  that it “impacted a very small number of Los Angeles County voters.”

“We are now in the process of alerting all affected voters in this precinct of the error by robocall and email, and tomorrow morning we will be mailing out new, corrected ballots with a letter describing the error,” Sanchez said.