While South Jersey waits for the votes in Cumberland County to ooze in, state Senator Mike Testa (R-1) criticized the Board of Elections for demonstrating a “total lack of preparedness.”

“This is a bipartisan issue,” Testa said. “The citizens of Cumberland deserve better than this.”

At a vote count rate of 600 ballots per hour, the BOE is not expected to process 27,863 additional ballots until next week. at the heart of the county stands an unresolved congressional race, where incumbent U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2) declared victory on Election Night. At present his lead stands as follows, according to the Associated Press:

His opponent, Democrat Amy Kennedy, decried Van Drew’s early declaration and the subsequent movements of his GOP allies.

“They’re taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook and sending D.C. lawyers to South Jersey to intimidate local election officials,” Kennedy said. “We can’t let these Trump-like dirty tricks work in South Jersey.”

Lizbeth Hernandez, administrator of the Cumberland County Board of Elections,

“Results are posted daily by the Cumberland County Clerk’s Office,” Hernandez told InsiderNJ. “The website for the results is www.ccclerknj.com.”

That website at present reports the following:

VOTER TURNOUT

TOTAL36.83%

Ballots Cast:

33,048

Registered Voters:

89,731

“The office of the Cumberland County Board of Elections is diligently working on processing the unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots received for this election,” Hernandez said.

Testa was not pleased.

“People are losing faith in the election process,” said the senator, co-chair of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in New Jersey.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden defeated Trump in New Jersey 59.4% to 39.5%, but the

incumbent Republican president did well in substantial pockets of South Jersey, an outcome that Van Drew foresaw in part last year when Testa defeated the congressman’s legislative team and changed his party affiliation. In Gloucester County, for example, home to Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-3), as of yesterday with 76% of the vote tallied, Trump was within 4K votes of Biden (80,700 to 84,120).

Testa, resident of a Democratically-controlled county that installed a bipartisan BOE, said, “We don’t know what the problem is, and we need people to have faith. No one has been able to talk to them.”

Insiders in both parties acknowledged that Kennedy’s pathway to victory at this point would be rigorous, but the Democrat was not ready to concede, as the counting tediously continued, according to Hernandez, amid increasingly irritability – even as the AP on Friday morning called the race in favor of Van Drew.

NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer released the following statement regarding the results of the NJ-02 election:

“Congratulations to Jeff Van Drew on his victory. Jeff has always been South Jersey’s biggest advocate and will continue fighting to deliver the good-paying jobs his district needs. With Jeff Van Drew returning to Congress, South Jersey is in good hands.”