NJ’s county clerks nudge mail voters to drop boxes for 2026 election

Some New Jersey county clerks are nudging voters to cast mail-in ballots by depositing them in ballot drop boxes and deemphasizing postal returns in a shift driven by the Trump administration’s stalled efforts to limit mail voting through U.S. Postal Service rules.

No clerks have urged voters not to mail their ballots back in, and none have voiced worries about fraud at the Postal Service, but the shift in their messaging has accelerated a rise in drop box returns, particularly among Democratic voters.

“I think I’ve been pushing the boxes for a while, not just this year,” said Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter, a Democrat. “It’s just this year I’ve actually been putting out more press releases and public notices because with all the stuff going on in D.C., people are more confused and concerned.”

This comes about a month after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a Postal Service rule that would have required states to upload protected voter data to federal systems and blocked the mailing of ballots in states that refused to share the information, which the federal government has no legal right to obtain.

The rule, which was opposed by voting rights groups and secretaries of state belonging to both parties, was broadly viewed as the latest Trump bid to limit mail voting. Though he casts mail ballots himself, the president has long claimed that mail voting is rife with fraud while producing no evidence of widespread voter fraud using mail ballots.

Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin, a Democrat, said the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict mail voting had spurred worries among voters in the county that were allayed when the high court rejected the Postal Service rule, at least for this election.

“We’ve only heard concerns about people wanting to make sure their voices are heard,” Durkin said. “The vote-by-mail voters had concerns up until the Supreme Court ruled against the executive order and the USPS rule. They were concerned that they were not going to be able to vote by mail and then relieved when we were able to mail ballots.”

But New Jersey’s county clerks have continued to push drop boxes despite the legal win.

In a press release issued more than a week after the court’s decision, Middlesex County called drop boxes “the most secure way to return your mail-in ballot” and listed drop boxes first among the three ways to return a ballot. A similar release issued by the office last year listed postal returns first and did not opine on the security of any return method.

A mailer sent by Mercer County Clerk Paula Sollami Covello outright recommended voters return their ballot to a drop box, while a mailer from Camden County Clerk Pam Lampitt stressed drop box returns so heavily that its only reference to postal returns lay in the term “vote by mail.”

Voters have taken notice. By Wednesday morning, nearly half of the state’s 319,422 returned mail ballots, 48.3%, reached election officials after being deposited in a drop box, a New Jersey Monitor analysis showed. A similar number of voters, 47.2%, mailed their ballots back in.

The share of ballots deposited in a drop box has edged up in recent days, though the delay between a ballot being mailed and reaching election officials likely means postal returns are underreported to a degree.

The rate of drop box returns is up significantly from past years. At roughly the same point in the cycle in 2023, 26.4% of mail votes had been cast by drop box, according to archival data maintained by Rider University’s Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. At a similar point in 2021, that number was 23.9%.

“We’ve never seen anything even approaching this level before, and it’s been a sudden difference,” said Micah Rasmussen, the Rebovich Institute’s director.

Voters can also hand-deliver their ballots to their county’s board of elections, but the method accounted for fewer than 0.6% of all mail ballots returned as of Wednesday morning. That figure may exclude some ballots hand-delivered by a bearer on another voter’s behalf.

Not all of New Jersey’s clerks have changed their messaging, nor do they all see a need to.

“I am just telling people there’s three ways to return a ballot like I always do because to me, since there’s been no change, I wouldn’t tell people to make a change,” said Monmouth County Clerk Christine Hanlon, who is also the Republican state chair.

There was no evidence of any problems, Hanlon said, and the Postal Service had successfully delivered hundreds of thousands of ballots on clerks’ behalf only weeks earlier.

“Why would you think they wouldn’t come back through the mail?” she said. “To me, it just doesn’t make sense, but that’s my personal opinion.”

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to return mail ballots using drop boxes in each of New Jersey’s 21 counties, but drop box returns among Republican voters were also elevated in most parts of the state.

They peaked in Atlantic County, where 47.7% of GOP mail votes were cast by drop box, though Republican voters in some counties, like Mercer, Union, and Monmouth, continued to use drop boxes at roughly historical levels.

Clerks stressed that drop box returns had other advantages. Ballots cast that way are collected daily and reach election officials faster than ballots returned through the post, and they can cut out postal delivery issues that plagued some counties in years past.

Counties have faced a range of postal issues over the years, from routine problems like misdelivered mail to lengthy delays due to dysfunction at specific post offices, but clerks have avoided hurling accusations of fraud at the agency even as they nudge voters away from the Postal Service.

“It’s a tough high-wire act to do because I don’t want to make false claims against the post office,” Peter said. “I just try to stick with my past experience with them, and the amount of ballots that are returned to my office that should have been delivered just leads me to wonder what’s going on at the sorting facilities, not that I think they’re doing it nefariously.”