New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has called a special election to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat for October 16, 2013. The primary will be in August. See this story.
Ballot Access News
Edited By Richard Winger
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has called a special election to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat for October 16, 2013. The primary will be in August. See this story.
I hear this special election will cost around 12 million dollars and the law could have been read two ways with an election next year as well.
I heard it will cost $24 million.
I think Christie doesn’t want a potential Democratic voter surge based around voting for a new Senator to interfere with his reelection.
The current front page on the NJ Elections website suggests that candidates for the primary will only have a week to collect the (presumably 800) signatures needed to get on the ballot: http://www.state.nj.us/state/elections/ No word yet on qualifying info for non-Democratic or Republican candidates.
You may be right Richard, but the Huff post was giving a 12 million figure.
The New York Times says it is $24 million. There will be a special primary in August and a special election in October, and each of them costs $12 million. The $12 million per election is composed of $6,500,000 for printing ballots, renting polling places, and delivering machines; plus $5,400,000 for wages for polling place officials.
Of course, even if he scheduled the special election for November, there would still be the $12 million for the August primary.
They also just had a primary for the November Governor race that cost $12 million.
Will the Geraldo Rivera rumors start up again?
Rivera did apparently say he’d accept the appointment, though actually taking the time to run is a very different question: http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/03/geraldo-rivera-on-new-jersey-senate-appointment-i-would-definitely-take-the-call/