Mail-in ballots started going out on Monday for the upcoming June primary election and this year County clerks had to create multiple versions depending on a voter's party affiliation that's because a federal judge recently eliminated use of the so-called Party Line ballot structure but only for the Democratic primary senior correspondent Joanna Gagis checked in with several County clerks as they prepare for the historic changes and got a look at the state's first ever office block ballots it's been hectic County clerks have had to scramble these last few weeks to get their ballots to match the federal court decision that abolished the county line the ballot design that puts all the candidates endorsed by County leadership in one row the court order came just days before the ballots were to be printed it was a scramble we didn't know if our machine company would be able to do it and they didn't know if they could do it what is frustrating to clerks is the fact that people don't understand how a ballots put together and and the judge kind of just he kind of inferred you just move the names around and that's not how it works our machine company services about 10 or 11 counties in New Jersey they have a program for their machine and it is set up to do columns not office blocks so they could not reprogram it they had to work within the parameters of what they had now for the actual voting machine that's not not a problem but for the vote by mail it's an issue because those are scanned and that scanner has a template and also parameters and boundaries of what it can do Joanne rjy is the county clerk in Union where she had approve 47 different ballots for the upcoming primary because of all the different Congressional County and Municipal races in Union but in the 19 counties that use the county line the ballot changes only apply to democratic candidates we now have two different ballot sty Styles because the county line decision in federal court was limit to the Democratic primary and the elections in in June are two really two separate elections so dealing with two different ballot Styles uh depending upon what your what county you're in uh has been very challenging mail and ballots started going out on Monday and they've already shipped to military members overseas so even though he passed on Wednesday Congressman Donald Jor will appear on this ballot he'll get votes that's for sure educating the public on these changes is the next big hurdle for County clerks who are launching education campaigns in a number of ways for the mail and ballot voters they're going to have something right in the ballot packet to notify them that there is a change for voters who are going to the polls we will conduct a separate type of educational process we'll be working to do social media education we will be trying to um send out mailers to voters we're urging them to look when the sample ballots are up on my website to familiarize themselves with that we're also doing an educational video early next week and that will be available on the website and it will be available to various Democratic clubs as well as Republican clubs if they want to see it can you confidently say that all 4 seven of those ballots will be accurate will be scanned correctly oh absolutely there's you know I've I've been involved in National um elections and the percentage of fraud despite what you hear is less than 1% my people proof the ballot not once but several times we proof it in English and we proof it in Spanish now it's up to you to proof your ballot to make sure you know how to vote on June 4th in Union I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight news