AG’s Office to Monitor 2 NJ Elections

New Jersey's attorney general will be keeping an eye on voting next week in elections in two of the state's largest cities.

The office will have deputy attorney generals in Newark and Paterson to act as roaming monitors, according to Attorney General Spokesman Lee Moore.

Additional attorneys will be on hand to deal with emergent, voting-related legal issues and there will also be state troopers assigned to both cities, Moore said Friday. He declined to say how many attorney general staffers would be deployed in total or the specifics of what they will be doing.

Election monitors are typically used when the attorney general "makes a determination that they are needed to safeguard the office's longstanding commitment to the right to vote," Moore said.

In Paterson, the majority of the eight candidates running for mayor and most of those running for city council signed a letter requesting the state's oversight. They cited concerns over partiality after the chairman of the Passaic County Board of Elections endorsed a mayoral candidate, a move he defended as legal.

Monitors will also oversee Newark's mayoral race, a contentious battle between City Councilman Ras Baraka and former Assistant Attorney General Shavar Jeffries, to fill the seat vacated by now-Sen. Cory Booker.

Both cities are holding elections on Tuesday, May 13.

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