Advance Robbinsville
FEBRUARY 2023 FREE
Good on the hardwood
COMMUNITYNEWS.ORG
Voters’ ballots rejected in Nov. 8 election morass BY BiLL SANserViNO
A number of voters in Robinsville Township, and maybe all of Mercer County, have been informed that their ballots were rejected in the November general election. The report of disenfranchised voters is just the latest issue with the Nov. 8 election in Mercer County, where voters could not use voting machines at every polling place in the county as a result
of a printing problem with the ballot. Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried said that a residents in town and throughout the county who voted at the polls on Election Day have received letters informing them that their votes had been discounted. The letter, which came from the Mercer County Board of Elections said: “This office is in receipt of your provisional ballot for the General Election on November
8th, 2022. Unfortunately, your provisional ballot was not counted for the following reason: Voted by Machine.” Fried said that the letters are believed to have been sent to voters who signed in at their polling station with the intention of voting on the machine, but were given a provisional ballot because the machine scanners were not processing the ballots. He said that poll workers were See ELECTION, Page 6
Area libraries are great places to spend the day BY DAN AUBreY
Robbinsville High School girls’ basketball player Ava Aldarelli, a freshman, is one of the team’s best all-around players. For more on Aldarelli and the team, turn to page 14.
Libraries are safe places that connect to the world of ideas and human memory and are always on the front lines of combatting censorship. Yet they are often the physical representations of past values and designs — if one just takes the time to check them out. So, let’s take a quick tour of some of the region’s vintage libraries. First stop, the Trenton Free Pub-
lic Library on Academy Street in Trenton. It’s the oldest organized library in New Jersey and the embodiment of a particular American movement. Founded in 1750 as the subscription-styled Trenton Library Company, it allegedly started with 50 books purchased by Benjamin Franklin. Yet the person who turned that first page in Trenton’s history was Dr. Thomas Cadwalader, who served as the town’s first chief Bur-
gess and contributed 500 pounds. The collection was housed in rented spaces or subscribers’ homes until the British arrived in 1776 and destroyed the building that housed the collection. The library was back and running by 1781 and by 1797 had 240 items in its collection. By 1804 the library collection was at 700 volumes and still growing without a permanent home. That need was addressed in 1900, See LIBRARIES, Page 9
Academy Dental CHILDREN
& ADULTS
Complete Dentistry for the Whole Family
1179 NEWARK, NJ
AcademyDentalNJ.com
See our ad on pg 3
Currently Open for Emergency Dental Care See our ad on page 11