Herb Tarbous announces bid to replace Elaine Flynn, retiring Middlesex County Clerk

Piscataway, 1/24/2020 – Herb Tarbous announced today that he is mounting a bid to replace Elaine Flynn who is retiring from her position as the Middlesex County Clerk after 25 years of dedicated service.

Tarbous said, “I want to congratulate Ms. Flynn on her retirement and her 25 years of service to the people of Middlesex County as Clerk.  In my dealings with her she has always proven to be someone of the highest integrity, competence, and most importantly a delightful person to be around.”

Tarbous is currently the Vice-President of the Piscataway Progressive Democratic Organization which is part of the Central Jersey Progressive Democratic coalition. He was elected to the Middlesex County Democratic County Committee in June of 2017 “off the line” and in June of 2019 he competed for the county chair position against Kevin McCabe.

“It was during a discussion I had with Elaine last year regarding ballot construction and the use of the county line in the primary election in which a key distinction occurred to me”, Tarbous continued.  “The use of the county line, while considered to be a valuable party building tool by some, has also been used to exclude people from the political process when deployed in the county committee races.”

“A true democracy does not use a ballot device to exclude grassroots participation in our political system and our government. As Middlesex County Clerk I will work tirelessly to lobby for changes on behalf of the people of Middlesex County who have been excluded from participating by working to ensure a completely democratic electoral system.”

Tarbous is a retired engineer who spent much of his career performing complex systems analysis and design for Telcordia/Ericsson in Piscataway and Bell Labs/AT&T Labs in Holmdel and Middletown.

“Election security is of paramount importance, I believe my experiences analyzing and designing network surveillance software has prepared me well for this 21^st century challenge”, Tarbous stated.

In addition to enhanced election security, Tarbous’ platform includes support for transparency and democracy enhancements such as “Voting Precinct Transparency Act” (A-4564) which was signed into law by Governor Murphy earlier this week and Andrew Zwicker’s Ranked Choice Voting bill (A-5205) which was introduced in the last year’s legislative session.

Since his retirement, Tarbous has been active in Middlesex County and New Jersey politics and is an active supporter of the youth-led climate activist group, The Sunrise Movement through their hubs at Rutgers University and the Jersey Shore as well as a supporter of the quickly growing “Take Back New Jersey” movement which has risen in response to the continuing scandal involving the NJ Economic Development Authority’s questionable awarding of billions of dollars in tax breaks to politically connected enterprises.