The fight for New Jersey's 12th District Congressional seat between Democratic incumbent Rush Holt and Republican challenger Dick Zimmer is still up for grabs and will remain undecided until tonight or Saturday at the earliest, Mercer County Superintendent of Elections Dulcy Ricciani said yesterday.
"By [tonight or Saturday], we will have verified provisional ballots," Ricciani said. "[Provisional ballots] are cast by residents who moved within the district after the registration rolls were completed, and are encouraged to vote at their new residence."
Mercer County officials must verify that those casting provisional ballots were registered correctly at their former polling station, and the process will continue through today, Ricciani said. The district's absentee ballots also have to be counted.
Like the presidential race in Florida, the election for the 12th District seat has been close and full of surprises. Early Wednesday, the Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times declared Zimmer the winner, a call that proved too hasty when Holt pulled ahead by a mere 56 votes by that afternoon. Because of the tiny margin, neither candidate has accepted victory or conceded defeat.
Despite the election's twists and turns, both campaigns remain confident. Zimmer appeared to lead by 371 votes yesterday, according to unofficial results posted by the state Division of Elections.
But election workers in five counties were still tallying ballots by registered voters who had changed residences before Election Day.
More than 1,600 such provisional ballots from four counties were being examined, state officials said. No one was sure how many were outstanding in the fifth county.
"We expect Rush's vote will grow as more votes are counted," Holt campaign spokesman Chuck Young said yesterday.
Zimmer campaign manager John Holub disagreed, saying that Zimmer staffers report their candidate with a solid lead in the provisional and absentee ballot counts.
"We're finding irregularities that they probably haven't accounted for," Holub said. "We're just trying to make sense of it all."
(The Associated Press contributed to the report.)
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