[brief] These elections may sound like an amusing background distraction to “real” elections, until one pauses and looks closer.  This year, the voters in [...] approved a budget of $8.9 million dollars.  According to data from the Department of Community Affairs, that means that Fire District No. 1 has a budget larger than 186 municipalities throughout the state, placing it between Sea Girt Borough and Neptune City.  The District is the sole entity responsible for ensuring that the residents of the fire district have critical fire protection services.  This is what makes what happened here even more concerning.  After the completion of counting the vote-by-mail ballots, [...], a Fire Commissioner and clerk of the Board, certified results demonstrating a tie-election between Plaintiff [...] and Respondent [...].  However, on the day before the reorganization, Krohn unilaterally authorized the election results to be “amended” and to declare that Cirz was the winner by one vote based upon nothing more than the representations of a staff member.  The change was predicated on the assertions by a District staff member that the original election results should have, but did not, included a vote cast as a write-in in the personal choice column for “Cirz” was not counted towards the totals for Respondent.  Krohn testified that he made this change based solely on the representations of a staff member, without reviewing any materials himself, or without talking to the attorney for the Board of Fire Commissioners, the full-time Administrator for the Fire District, or other Fire Commissioners.  The definition of arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.  Not only was the decision to amend the election results wrong for a want of authority to act unilaterally or to modify previously certified election results outside of an election contest or recount, the substantive basis was wrong as a matter of law.  The New Jersey Legislature has specifically stated, multiple times, that the right to provided voters the opportunity to vote for candidates is limited to candidates who do not already appear on the ballot and that an attempt to cast a vote for those candidates by personal choice is null and void.  Our appellate courts have upheld this brightline rule in two reported decisions, which should have been decisive here: *In re Ocean Cty. Com'r of Registration for a Recheck of the Voting Machs.*, 379 N.J. Super. 461 (App. Div. 2005), and *Matter of Gen. Election Held in Tp. of Monroe, Gloucester Cty., N.J. on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 1990.*, 245 N.J. Super. 70, 73 (App. Div. 1990).  Despite these well-settled and binding principles, the trial court erroneously and inexplicably held that the write-in ballot cast on the voting machine during the [...] Annual Election for “Cirz” should be counted in favor of candidate “[...],” upholding the *ultra vires* decision of Commissioner Krohn to improperly modify the results of the election declaring Cirz the winner by one vote over Hopson.  The trial court’s decision is wrong as a matter of law and must be promptly reversed.  This Court should reverse that decision and enter a final order barring the improper votes from being counted and returning the election to a tie or ordering a new election.