A judge today denied an NJGOP effort to compel election officials to disclose how many Election Day vote-by-mail (VBM) ballots are recorded at area polling locations.

Republican attorney Matt Moench (the mayor of Bridgewater) represented the Republican cause in the case.

“Our case at its core was for poll workers to give out the counts of dropped-off vote-by-mail ballots,” said Moench.

The goal was to have a data point, and to keep precise track of the ballots.

But Judge Marcy C. Jacobson said the legislation on the books only requires provisional ballots and machine ballots be tallied every two hours.