Maureen Bugdon

Superintendent of Elections and Commissioner of Registration, Atlantic County, New Jersey

Maureen Bugdon is the Superintendent of Elections & Commissioner of Registration for Atlantic County, New Jersey, achieving that appointment in 2013, after serving eight years on the Atlantic County Board of Elections. In her role as Superintendent, Bugdon instituted concentrated countywide outreach to capture new and updated voter registration information while simultaneously offering education on the voting process. Cross-training, professional development, collaboration with counter election offices and government entities, extended public hours via staff flextime, compliance with statutes and regulations, as well as improved accuracy within county voter files and transparency within election materials are all hallmarks of this Superintendent’s tenure.

Ms. Bugdon also represents her peers as the Immediate Past President of the New Jersey Association of Election Officials, as a Steering Committee Member for the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, and as a Local Leadership Council Member for the United States Election Commission. Maureen works closely with the NJ Attorney General’s Office as well as the Division of Elections, accompanying Lt. Governor Tahesha Way (then serving as Secretary of State) in March of 2018 during the development of a critical Cyber Security Training program at Boston’s prestigious MIT. Attendees from just a handful of states partnered with federal law enforcement, the U.S. military, private industry tech leaders and student prodigies, offering final recommendations to this training prior to it being released nationally. Maureen is a fierce advocate for election official safety and awareness training.

Bugdon has spoken before legislators, committees and various community groups on important election topics and bills. Her non-partisan manner won her and her former Board of Elections colleagues the praise of the honorable Judge Armstrong during the only split vote of that seated board. Prior to her work in elections, Bugdon served as President of Atlantic City Race Course. She was the first female officer in the history of the seashore oval and the only female lead of a horse track in the country in a non-ownership position. Maureen led a staff that grew from a modest 45 to over 250 during the live racing operation, where she and her team achieved 30-year attendance records during the final years of the track’s operation.

Bugdon’s professional associations included serving as Vice Chair of the Atlantic County Improvement Authority, Commissioner on the Volunteer Center of Atlantic County, Atlantic Riding Center for the Handicapped and Buddy Ball Sports League. As former Co-Chair of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s Annual Spring Scholarship Benefit, she helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in student scholarship money. Bugdon served as a volunteer Counselor for Camp Lost & Found, a Children’s Bereavement Camp, and donates her time as a Patient-to-Patient Cancer Survivor Advocate.

In her private life, Maureen herself is a 3-time survivor, published writer, caregiver to a parent with end-stage Alzheimer’s disease and the proud Latino mother of three children all born through a gestational carrier. Ms. Bugdon resides in Mays Landing, New Jersey.