Well, we sort of have early voting in New Jersey. What it really is, though, is that you can hand in your absentee ballot in the same hour that you receive it. Of course, first you have to figure out where to get an absentee ballot.
So you need your County Clerk's office. In the county seat, right? In Sussex County, way in the northwest corner of the state, that's Newton. Must be in one of those buildings around the square. Aha! There's one called the county administrative center. It's on the hard side of the square, after you've gone all the way around, through two traffic lights, and there's no parking on that side of that part of Spring St. But look! There's a big parking lot behind it, off Trinity.
No County Clerk listed on the directory at front or back, and no offices that promise any kind of guidance. Finally a passer-by takes pity. "Oh, no. That's in 83, the building at 83 Spring St. Just up that way." That is, the wrong way back up the square. So I walk. Uphill. And I see no numbers on any buildings until we're past 90, and they seem to be even numbers. There's nothing to indicate a government building.
I do note that half of this office building seems to be occupied by Congressman Scott Garrett's district office.
I'm wondering when the clerk's office might close.
I cross the street to get some perspective.
From across the street, in the square with the monument, the Cochran Building is certainly impressive, but no help in finding the County Clerk to get my absentee ballot.
I head back across the street, thinking maybe there's someone in the building who can point me in the right direction. The doorway is not very inviting, but when I tear my eyes away from the coded lock, I see at last a listing painted on the glass.
I try the door, and it opens to a spartan lobby. Now what?
Eventually I find the brass plaques with the arrows on the far corner. I head down a rabbit warren of hallways, jogging left, then turning right, and then? Board of Elections? No, it says keep going down this way where the lights are off. And finally I'm there. I can get my ballot.
That was in 2012, when I really wanted an absentee ballot to mail back from caring for my Dad in Florida. I returned to Cochran House a couple of times in the past year to "call on" Congressman Garrett. The blinds are always closed as they appear above, and the glass is heavily tinted, double paned with wire embedded between. It always looks as though nobody's there.
When a group of us arrived hoping in fact to speak to someone on the staff, three of us were actually admitted after we saw there was life within. But the rest were simply left in this stark lobby, with no place to sit and no communication with anyone else.
Welcome to Congressman Garrett's district office. Your tax dollars welcome you. Well, if you have an appointment.
We were told that the wire-embedded, dark-tinted glass, the lock, and this "Do Not Enter" sign were measures imposed on all members of Congress after the Gabby Giffords shooting. More effective than gun control?
There is a large parking lot behind the building, off Trinity Street. From there, the building looks much bigger, but somehow even less welcoming and less identifiable as housing county offices.
It is clearer that it's not so far to the county administration building (right). But their parking lots are carefully separated.
The left end of the back of the building is the only place any county office is visibly identified.
The other offices are listed on the back door, but no more clearly than on the front.
And since the building that houses these essential citizen services is actually private, the only adjacent public parking is metered during business hours. OK, it's only a quarter for 90 minutes, but still.
Sun Nov 02, 2014 at 9:18 AM PT: With sincere hope in my heart after reading in a Cho mailing that the Bergen Co. Clerk's office is open Sunday (well, until 2PM) for early voting, I scurried to correct myself about Sussex. Turns out, that was Saturday, just until noon, and if you could find your way to the last two entries on the page, http://sussexcountyclerk.org/... you were advised to call to confirm before you came. There's still Monday, to 3PM.