A look at election results in New Jersey from June 10

By

Lara Bonatesta

Welcome to the Thursday, June 12, 2025, Brew. 

By: Lara Bonatesta

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

  1. A look at election results in New Jersey from June 10
  2. Iowa governor signs law changing election recount procedures 
  3. A look at the elections for Georgia’s Public Service Commission

A look at the election results in New Jersey from June 10

As we continue our coverage of elections throughout 2025, today we’re taking a look at the results of the June 10 primaries in New Jersey.

New Jersey is holding elections for governor and all 80 seats in its General Assembly this year. Here’s a look at the results of those primaries. 

Governor

Sherrill and Ciattarelli will now advance to the Nov. 4 general election and will face four other independent or third-party candidates.

Incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy is term-limited. In the 2021 general election, Murphy defeated Ciattarelli 51.2% – 48.0%. Murphy was the first Democratic governor in New Jersey to win reelection since Brendan Byrne in 1977. The last Republican to serve as governor was Chris Christie (R), who served from 2010 to 2018. 

According to The Downballot, the last time either political party won more than two consecutive New Jersey gubernatorial elections was in 1965. In that election, incumbent Gov. Richard Hughes (D) defeated Wayne Dumont (R), marking the fourth straight Democratic win. 

General Assembly

There were 29 contested state House primaries, including 22 Democratic and seven Republican primaries.

Seventy-six incumbents ran for reelection, leaving four open seats. As of June 11, one Democratic incumbent—Garnet Hall, first elected in 2023— was defeated in the primaries. Eight races featuring 13 incumbents remained to be called. Each district has two representatives.

No incumbents lost in New Jersey General Assembly primaries from 2011 to 2017. One lost in 2019, and three lost in 2021. No incumbents were defeated in the chamber in the 2023 primaries.

Click here to learn more about New Jersey’s 2025 state legislative primaries.

Context

As we wrote in our March 10 and April 17 editions of The Daily Brew, this was the first primary without the state’s county-line ballot design.

As Politico’s Matthew Friedman said in a February episode of Ballotpedia’s On the Ballot, most jurisdictions in the U.S. use an office block ballot design. 

On March 6, Gov. Murphy signed A5116/S4142 into law, eliminating the county-line system and requiring county clerks to use an office block ballot design that groups candidates by the office they are running for.

According to a June 6 New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission report, the June 10 gubernatorial primaries were also the most expensive in the state’s history, with candidates and satellite groups spending more than $122 million combined.

New Jersey is one of two states–the other being Virginia–holding gubernatorial and state legislative elections in 2025.

To learn more about New Jersey’s 2025 elections, click here. 

Other June 10 election results

Six other states held special elections, ballot measure elections, or other elections for local offices on June 10. Three states – Florida, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma – also held special state legislative elections. Here’s a look at those results.

Florida:

Massachusetts

  • Special general election for Massachusetts House of Representatives 3rd Bristol District:  Lisa Field (D) and Lawrence Quintal (R) ran. Former incumbent Carol Doherty (D) ran uncontested in 2024. Following the election, the Taunton Daily Gazette reported that Field, who led Quintal by 21 votes, had declared victory and that Quintal said he would request a recount.

Oklahoma:

 Click here to see all election results from June 10. 

Iowa governor signs law changing election recount procedures 

On June 2, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed House File 928 into law, which limits who can request election recounts and establishes that the state will pay for them. 

The bill, which takes effect July 1, says: 

  • Federal and statewide candidates may only request a recount if there is a 0.15% difference in votes.
  • Local and state legislative candidates may only request a recount if the difference is less than 1% or 50 votes, whichever is less.
  • County commissioners, rather than individuals the candidates select, must conduct the recounts. Under the new law, candidates can still appoint up to five people to observe the recount.
  • Recounts must use certified automatic tabulating equipment, and hand recounts may only occur in  “extraordinary circumstances,” defined by the bill as including a machine failure, discrepancies between original and recounted results, or an overvote total in the recount that exceeds the vote margin.
  • The secretary of state has the authority to intervene in a county recount if they believe it is not being carried out as required by law. The secretary of state may take custody of ballots and equipment, and must complete the recount.  

Iowa will become the 18th state to specify a margin for candidates to request a recount. Twenty-five states do not require a specific margin for a candidate to request a recount, while seven states do not allow candidates to request a recount. In one state, Louisiana, the number of outstanding absentee/mail-in ballots must be enough to change the election outcome to request a recount.  

Previously, no margin was required to request a recount, but margins did affect who paid for a recount. Under the new law, the state will cover the cost of all requested recounts. 

Before, when any candidate could request a recount, the state paid for the recount when the margin of victory separating candidates was 50 votes or 1% of the total number of votes cast, whichever was greater. In all other instances, the candidate paid. Candidates were refunded if the recount changed the election outcome.

With the new law, the state now pays for a requested recount in seven states, while the requester pays in 23. In 11 states, who pays depends on the circumstances of the election or the recount. 

The recount can be requested up to three days after the county canvass. The deadline for completion is 18 days after the county canvass. 

According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, “This would stop recounts in future elections similar to those requested in recent elections, like the 2024 election recount for the race between U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Christina Bohannan, that was within 0.2%.” 

In that race, incumbent Republican Miller-Meeks defeated Bohannan, a Democrat, 50.0%-49.8%. When Bohannan requested the recount on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, the margin was 802 votes, according to the unofficial results. Bohannan conceded on Nov. 27 after the recount showed that Miller-Meeks had won by 799 votes.

The Iowa House passed the new recount law 66-31 vote on March 25. Sixty-five Republicans and one Democrat voted in favor, while all 31 Democrats present voted against it. 

The Senate passed the bill 31-14 along party lines on April 14. All Republicans present voted yes, and all Democrats present voted no. 

Iowa has a Republican trifecta. Republicans have a  34-16 majority in the state Senate and a 67-33 majority in the House. Reynolds is a Republican.

State Rep. Austin Harris (R), the bill’s House floor manager, said,  “We have seen in years past where the old system was used, abused, and manipulated by campaigns to try to ‘fix the outcome’ for their preferred candidate. Now we have a system that brings uniformity, consistency, and most importantly, trust to that system.”

During Senate debate, bill opponent Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott (D) criticized the rule establishing that auditors must perform the recounts: “What we will have, if we shift to this new model, is candidates feeling very suspicious, very uncertain and not knowing if they can trust what they’re hearing.” 

So far this year, lawmakers have introduced 57 bills related to recounts, fewer than in 2024 (63 bills) and 2023 (58). Of the bills introduced this year, Democrats have sponsored 26, and Republicans have sponsored 22. 

In addition to Iowa, five other states–Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota– have modified their recount laws this year.

Reynolds also signed a bill on June 2 banning ranked-choice voting. We covered that bill in our June 5 edition of The Daily Brew.

Click here to learn more about recount laws in Iowa, and here to learn more about recount laws and procedures in all 50 states.

A look at the elections for Georgia’s Public Service Commission

As part of our ongoing coverage of important local elections around the country, today we’re looking at a June 17 primary election for two of the five seats of Georgia’s Public Service Commission. 

The Georgia Public Service Commission is in charge of regulating the state’s utility services. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Mark Niesse wrote that this was the first election “following three years of canceled races and a court battle over the legality of statewide voting that has elected only one Black candidate to the board.”

Georgia was originally scheduled to hold elections for the Public Service Commission in 2022. However, the election was canceled after U.S. District Court Judge Steven Grimberg ruled on Aug. 5, 2022, that the Commission’s statewide elections reduced the power of Black voters and that the 2022 general election should not be held using that system. 

In November 2023, the 11th Circuit ruled that Georgia could again hold at-large elections for seats on the Commission. 

In March 2024, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said the elections would not be held as a result of pending challenges to the 11th Circuit’s ruling. In January 2025, Judge William M. Ray II dismissed the case, allowing elections to proceed.

Two seats are up for election. While the position is elected statewide, candidates must live in the district they are running in.

District 2 covers the eastern part of the state and includes the cities of Athens and Savannah. Three candidates are running in the partisan primaries:

  1. In the Democratic primary, Alicia Johnson is running unopposed. She is a doctor and has experience working in healthcare.
  2. In the Republican primary, incumbent Tim Echols (R) and Lee Muns (R) are running. Echols has been the incumbent since 2011, and Munn is a business owner.

District 3 covers much of the Atlanta metropolitan area, including Fulton County and DeKalb County, where the city is located. Five candidates are running in the partisan primaries:

  1. In the Republican primary, incumbent Fitz Johnson (R) is running unopposed. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) appointed him to the seat in 2021.
  2. In the Democratic primary, three candidates are running: nonprofit executive Peter Hubbard (D), former utility company executive Robert Jones (D), and former state Rep. Keisha Sean Waites (D).

A fourth candidate,  former regional Environmental Protection Agency director Daniel Blackman (D), who also ran in 2020, will also appear on the ballot for District 3 but was disqualified from the primary. 

On May 16, an Atlanta resident challenged Blackman’s residency. On May 27, a state administrative law judge ruled Blackman had failed to prove he lived in the district. On May 28, Raffensperger announced Blackman would be removed from the ballot. Blackman appealed the decision. On June 10, Judge Ural D. Glanville said he would uphold Raffensperger’s decision. 

In Georgia, a primary runoff is held if no candidate gets a majority of the vote. A primary runoff (if necessary) will be held on July 15.

The general election is on Nov. 4. Georgia is also one of three states that hold general election runoffs if no candidate receives a majority of the vote. If necessary, a general runoff will be held on Dec. 2.

All 50 states have public service commissioners. The position’s duties vary by state, but their general role involves regulating essential utility services such as energy, telecommunications, and water.

Other than the elections in Georgia, no other states are holding public service commission elections in 2025. Ten states elect their public service commissioners, while the governor or the legislature appoints them in the other 40. Seven states are holding public service commission elections in 2026. 

Currently, all five Georgia Public Service Commissioners are Republicans. Republicans hold majorities in 10 of the 11 states that have partisan public service commission elections. Illinois is the one state with a Democratic majority on its public service commission.Click here to learn more about Georgia’s 2025 Public Service Commission election, and click here to learn more about public service commissions nationally.