Election News Updates

UPDATE, 10:14 p.m.:

Results are in! Read everything here. The county results are lagging behind; Barnegat is one of the only municipalities not yet fully reporting. But Township Clerk Kathleen T. West supplied the tallies to us via e-mail.

UPDATE, 10:14 p.m.:

No new movement on vote tallies; we're still at eight of 12 districts reporting, or just over 66 percent of the vote. As the current fourth-place vote-getter, Armando Quiroz is 73 votes behind current third-place candidate Alice Olker.

UPDATE, 9:55 p.m.:

Eight of 12 districts reporting. The top three candidates haven't changed, but it's a close race; the spread between the highest vote-getter and the lowest is less than four percentage points.

UPDATE, 9:45 p.m.:

Halfway mark on vote tallies. Incumbents Lisa Becker and Denise Pilovsky and newcomer Alice Olker are in the lead; budget "yes" votes lead by more than 10 percentage points. Voter turnout is off the charts.

UPDATE, 9:27 p.m.:

With more than 3,000 votes tallied, incumbent Lisa Becker leads with 18.6 percent of the vote, followed closely by Denise Pilovsky and Alice Olker. So far, 57.2 percent of voters OK'd the budget, as opposed to 42.8 who voted it down.

UPDATE, 9:19 p.m.: 

Results starting to trickle in via the county elections website. With 570 votes tallied, the challenger candidates have the lead.

UPDATE, 8:30 p.m.: 

Scott Sarno, who's worked with the challenger candidates during the campaign, just told us he's been visiting polling places along with candidate Alice Olker throughout the day, and they've collected some numbers that support anecdotal reports of high turnout – especially west of the Parkway.

"The majority of the big turnout's in the senior communities," he said. "Right now...total count is at about 3,100." That's not as high as last year's 3,500, he said, but it's above average.

The two polling places in Heritage Point together had 500 more voters than in 2009, Sarno said. 

Stay tuned – once voting stops at 9 p.m., we'll be checking in with the clerk's office and the county elections website for the initial results. 

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UPDATE, 8:10 p.m.:

Less than an hour to go!

Polls have definitely quieted down; during stops at Brighton at Barnegat and Heritage Bay between about 7:30 and 8 p.m., we saw no traffic, and only a few stragglers were voting at the Dunfee School just after 8.

Parents Linda and Robert Sweets said they have kids in the elementary school and middle school, and saw a vote for the budget as a vote to support their children's after school activities. 

"We want our after school sports to continue," Linda said. "It keeps kids off the streets."

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UPDATE, 6:30 p.m.:

We caught up with candidate Armando Quiroz, who's running to keep his appointed seat alongside incumbents Lisa Becker and Denise Pilovsky, shortly after 6 p.m.

He and his running mates have spent the day hopping from one location around town to another, he said, bringing coffee to poll workers, meeting up with one another periodically and using up a lot of cell phone minutes.

The 19-year-old Democrat's age became a hot issue in the campaign, with some saying his lack of experience made him a poor choice for a body with so much fiscal power, and othes – including his running mates, who voted him on as a volunteer fill-in member in November – saying his youth was an asset to a board that exists to serve the township's young residents.

What the numbers will show when the polls close at 9 p.m. is up in the air, Quiroz said, but he was heartened today by the strong showing by voters across the township.

"I'm not sure how the results are going to go tonight," he said, "but I'm glad to see the turnout that we're seeing. It makes me happy to see that people are at least interested in voting."

Quiroz has reason to know the kind of turnout Barnegat usually sees for a school election; he's worked the polls in town for years.

"Probably the weirdest part is being on the ballot," he said. "When I voted for myself – that struck me a bit."

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UPDATE, 5:50 p.m.:

At the Pheasant Run Clubhouse on Pine Oak Drive, poll worker Frank Pecci said he's seen an impressive level of voter turnout so far today.

"I'd guess we've had about 400," he said. "The only other time it was this heavy was when the group (of current incumbents) was trying to oust (Thomas) McMahon," the former superintendent who left after several of his supporters on the Board of Education were replaced three years ago by this year's incumbents Lisa Becker and Denise Pilovsky and their running mate.

The township's voting divide was apparent in comments from voters leaving the polls in this retirement community just west of the Garden State Parkway.

While many residents in the eastern section of town said they cast their votes in favor of the budget today, the general opinion among those heading out of the polls at Pheasant Run was that the school budget was costing taxpayers too much.

Heritage Bay residents Mike and Loretta Reilly were among several who said they rejected the budget, and voted for the three challenger candidates. 

"It's the tax issue I'm most concerned about," Loretta Reilly said. Most people who are of retirement age like them feel the squeeze from local taxes.

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UPDATE, 5 p.m.:

Township Clerk Kathleen T. West and clerk's office employee Donna Manno said polling places have so far seen a lot of voter traffic. 

"It's been very steady," Manno said. "Out the door at Pheasant Run, out the door at Mirage."

They said there's been only one voting machine issue so far today – a voter in Heritage Bay cast a ballot without selecting any names, Manno said, causing some confusion. County election officials walked the poll workers through the problem, she said, and it was resolved quickly.

Some District 2 voters who didn't realize their polling place had switched from Barnegat High School to the municipal court room showed up in the wrong place, said West. But most residents were aware of the change, she said, and there's been minimal confusion so far.

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4 p.m.:

With the first hour of voting over in Barnegat, many of the residents filing in and out the two polling stations at Barnegat High School say they came out to support the budget and the Board of Education incumbents.

Michael P. Howard, who will run as a Democrat in the Township Committee election in November, said he cast his vote in favor of the district's budget, and chose to reelect Lisa Becker and Denise Pilovsky and support appointee Armando Quiroz IV, who is running to keep his seat.

High taxes are an issue in Barnegat, but "I've got no problem with the school board coming in even," he said. "Some people think that by voting (the budget) down, they're solving something. It solves nothing."

Instead, he said, the schools will suffer more cuts and the Township Committee will absorb those cuts by spending more itself.

"Believe me, I've voted no for the budget when I thought it was fat," Howard said. "This is not fat."

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Weeks of campaigning come to a close today as residents head to the polls to fill three seats on the Board of Education and offer an up or down vote on the school budget.

For details on the candidates and a complete list of polling places in the township, read our . And keep checking back with us here to read the latest updates on what voters are saying at the polls about the candidates, the budget and the mood on election day.

Follow us on Twitter – we're BarnegatPatch – for the most up-to-date news.