A 90-year-old Monmouth County woman will be able to vote this year after a judge found she made a good-faith effort to register and couldn’t rule out a mistake at the Commission for motor vehicles when she changed the address on her driver’s license.

This allows a person who has voted regularly since the mid-1950s to be disenfranchised.

“All my life I have voted,” the woman testified. “I’m 90 now, but I’ve been voting since I could vote and I’d really like to continue as long as I can.”

Today’s ruling underscores the importance of voters defending their right to vote by appearing before a judge to present their case.

The woman, whose name is being withheld by the New Jersey Globe, updated her residency from New York to New Jersey last year in June 2023.

“I went with my daughter to the car to get my license. I have completed the application. he did a little check for the vote and that was it,” the woman told Superior Court Judge Linda Grasso Jones.

She said her daughter changed her address and registered to vote at the same time, and the registration was complete.

Monmouth County Superintendent of Elections Christopher Siciliano and Jason Sena, a Monmouth County GOP attorney, each advocated for women’s suffrage.

“I think it’s clear to me that a mistake was made on the part of the agency and not the voter, and the voter should be able to vote her,” Sena said.

But Assistant Attorney General Egle Dykhne objected to the 90-year-old’s request to vote, providing a certification from the Motor Vehicle Commission that the box on the computer screen was checked that had “opted out of registration to vote or otherwise altered voter registration status. .”

“MVC has no record of any prior or subsequent transaction involving the above named voter that contradicts the information contained in this certification,” Dykhne told the judge. “She then certified that the above statements made by her were true and certified that if any of those statements were willfully false, she was liable to punishment.”

The Seine opposed.

“This is the first time in ten years of volunteering on Election Day that I’ve seen the attorney general’s office procure a document to introduce into evidence that wasn’t already part of the file to oppose a voter application,” he said.

Siciliano, a former Democratic Ocean Township mayor who once ran the same Eatontown auto center the woman went to, told Grasso Jones that he understood how the MVC system could have led to an error.

“There’s a lot of background noise,” Siciliano said. “With that background noise and sitting there with a 90-year-old applicant and it wouldn’t surprise me that he didn’t hear the instructions or even ticked the wrong box. Our window agents don’t necessarily see what box you’re checking, just that you’re checking a box. So they also have no function whether you register or not. You just had a yes or no action.”

The judge found the woman’s testimony credible.

“Our position has always been that if you’re eligible to vote, we absolutely want you to vote. We want everyone eligible to vote,” Grasso Jones said. “The applicant should be allowed to vote.”

Grasso Jones said the woman “did the things she was supposed to do.”

“The fault could have been on the part of the complainant, but the fault could also have been on the part of the Motor Vehicle Commission,” she said. “He certainly did it in good time.”

She added, “There’s no obligation for the applicant to go back to the DMV or call (the Motor Vehicle Commission) and say, ‘Hey, you got your paperwork, right?’

An Ocean County resident will be unable to vote today after missing the Oct. 15 voter registration deadline. Judge Craig Wellerson’s hands were tied by a statute setting a deadline.

Wellerson also denied an Ocean County man who had been registered to vote before a 2012 criminal conviction the chance to vote this year because he never re-registered. And that left the judge with no options.

“Why are we rejecting eligible voters? Year after year, New Jersey is missing out on voters because of our arbitrary 21-day registration deadline,” said Henal Patel, director of law and policy at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “It’s shameful and unnecessary. It’s long overdue for us to join the 20+ states that have same-day voter registration.”

If you are not allowed to vote, or feel you are improperly pushed to vote on a provisional ballot when you are entitled to vote by machine, you can present your case to a Superior Court judge to determine your eligibility to vote. Judges will be called for each of the nine early voting days; hearings are done remotely and you can attend a Zoom hearing from your phone at a polling location.

Voters should not easily accept being rejected. Ask to speak to the person in charge, known as a Super Poll Worker, the person who is most fluent in ways that can help you vote.

If you plan to appear before an election judge, you can call the ACLU Voter Hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) or contact your county election officials. Click HERE for a list.