In Hoboken, the battle of for the fourth ward city council seat took another turn today, with former Councilman Chris Campos calling on Attorney General Anne Milgram to send in election monitors.

Campos and his opponent, Dawn Zimmer, are facing each other at the polls for a third time.  The first election in May resulted in a June run off, which Zimmer narrowly won.  The Campos campaign, with the help of former Jersey City Mayor Gerry McCann, challenged the results in court, leading to Zimmer’s agreement to step down from the seat and settle the matter in this month’s election. 

The campaigns have spent the last two months charging and counter-charging each other over the use of absentee ballots and purging of voter rolls. 

Today, Campos said that Zimmer had delivered nine absentee ballots that had been declared illegal by the board of elections, including one with the name of a non-US citizen.  Another one of the ballots, they said, was from Freddy Frazier, who also ran for the council seat in May and forced the runoff by receiving a particularly large number of absentee votes. 

Campos also brought race into the mix, charging that Zimmer was purposefully purging minority voters from the rolls who are residents of the Hoboken Housing Authority. 

“If my opponent thinks she’ll deny people their constitutional right to vote because of the color of their skin or because she can’t depend on a guarantee of their support, then I’ve got news for Dawn Zimmer: This time around the Fourth Ward’s election is going to be a free and fair one,” said Campos in a statement. 

Zimmer spokeswoman Jenny Davis said that the board of elections had declared Frazier a non-resident of the fourth ward because they went to the wrong address when investigating the claim. 

The Zimmer campaign has provided 81 names to the Board of Elections, 40 of which have been stricken from the voter rolls after being investigated for not living in the fourth ward.   Davis said that the campaign began investigating registrations after some residents complained to them about being asked to register in the district when they lived in others.

Davis used the example of an elderly fifth ward resident, Jose Lamoso, who said he was pressured by a Campos ally to register at his old fourth ward address.

“We have wide support in the black and Hispanic community in the fourth ward.  We are going through the process with anyone we have concerns about,” said Davis, who said she would welcome the presence of election monitors. 

“Bring in the election monitors, please do,” said Davis.  “We welcome election monitors, absolutely.”

Attorney General spokesman David Wald said that his office had not yet received the request for election monitors and declined to comment until they did.