• November General Election shall be conducted primarily by vote by mail ballots (VBM).
• Atlantic County Clerk will begin mailing the VBM ballots to “active” voters on or before October 5, 2020.
• Atlantic County will have at least one (1) polling location in each municipality.
• All public primary and secondary schools shall be closed to in-person instruction.
• Atlantic County shall open a minimum of fifty (50) percent of its regularly used polling places, the BOE must utilize schools or other large facilities to serve as large voting centers to accommodate more voting districts in one polling place.
• Atlantic County will have at least ten (10) drop box locations that are readily accessible.
• Voters who appear at a polling place and have not returned a voted mail-in ballot shall vote via a provisional ballot.
• Accommodations will be made for voters with disabilities.
• Board of Elections (BOE) shall designate each polling place as a location to received voted mail-in ballots. A voter may return only the mail-in ballot they personally voted to their designated polling place.
• Every VBM ballot that is postmarked on or before November 3, 2020 and is received by November 10, 2020, by 8:00 PM, shall be considered valid and shall be canvassed (assuming it meets all statutory requirements).
• Voters whose ballots are rejected for a missing or discrepant signature, shall be given the opportunity to cure the signature defect in accordance with procedures established by the Secretary of State.

NOTE: You do not have to complete a vote by mail application unless you would like to have your ballot mailed to an address that is different from your residence address.

New Jersey Division of Elections: General Election Timeline

New Jersey Division of Elections: Federal Candidates Information

What’s the difference between absentee and mail-in voting?

            A ballot that has been sent to a voter and is voted outside of a polling place or election official’s office has traditionally been referred to as an “absentee ballot” and the person who votes that ballot has been called an “absentee voter.” This terminology is common in state law and comes from the concept that voters would use this option only when they were “absent” from their neighborhood polling place on Election Day.

            As time has gone on and more and more voters request a ballot in advance as their default voting method, and as states have begun offering more opportunities for voters to do so, the terminology has evolved. Some states refer to “advance ballots,” “mailed ballots,” “by-mail ballots,” “mail ballots” or “vote-by-mail ballots.”

The bottom line is that the two terms are often used interchangeably.