Credit: (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)New Jersey Democratic primary voters will see ballots that look very different from what they are used to and also different from the ones Republican voters will see.
County clerks are designing ballots for the June election to comply with the recent federal court ruling that ends the state’s unique “county-line” balloting, though only for the Democratic primary. Clerks have been working with vendors Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software to design the new ballots and meet the April 20 deadline for sending out mail-in ballots. Some clerks have already completed their work and displayed the new designs during their drawings last Thursday for where to place candidates on the ballot.
Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi, one of those who displayed a new Democratic ballot during the drawing for position, said educating voters about what to do when they see the strange looking ballot is a bigger issue than the design.
Credit: Courtesy of Union County Clerk“We’re already starting to do some voter education on it,” Rajoppi said. “People are going to go into the voting booth and say, ‘What happened?’”
Instead of seeing lines of candidates running on the same ticket either across or down, Democratic voters will see one block for each office with the names of the candidates listed below in the order in which they were drawn randomly. Republican candidates will still be displayed in the traditional party lines because the lawsuit that ended that practice was brought by Democrats — led by U.S. Senate candidate Andy Kim. Kim and others argued that the system gave an edge to candidates endorsed by party organizations and U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi agreed.
Credit: Courtesy of Union County ClerkA court hearing this week
The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stay Quraishi’s ruling and has scheduled a hearing for Friday. Every county clerk’s office that had been appealing the ruling has dropped out of the case.
The Camden County Democratic Committee, Morris County Republican Committee and NJ Republican Chairs Association are continuing to appeal in an effort to maintain party-line balloting and the power it gives to the county parties, and their leaders, in particular.
Quraishi ruled March 29 that no county can design Democratic primary ballots that include a preferential party line, agreeing with Kim and other Democratic candidates who sued in February arguing that the line puts those who aren’t awarded the party favor at a disadvantage.
U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi said he took the ‘extraordinary’ step of issuing an injunction against the use of the line for Democrats this year because ‘the integrity of the democratic process for a primary election is at stake.’
Quraishi said he took the “extraordinary” step of issuing an injunction against the use of the line for Democrats this year because “the integrity of the democratic process for a primary election is at stake.” He dismissed clerks’ concerns that they would be unable to redesign ballots in a short time because he said that was outweighed by “the public interest in having candidates running in the 2024 Primary presented on the ballot in a fair and equal manner that is free from unnecessary government interference.”
Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin published a study last year that detailed the advantage the party line gives to candidates. Legislative incumbents who had the party line in all the counties in which they were running over the last two decades won the nomination almost 99% of the time, Rubin’s study found. And in federal elections, candidates who appeared on the county line performed an average of 38 percentage points better than their opponents, the study showed.
A different court challenge
In 2021, a number of unsuccessful primary candidates and the New Jersey Working Families Alliance filed another federal lawsuit to challenge the party-line ballot design. That case is still pending and is expected to be decided at the same time a judge issues a final decision in Kim’s lawsuit. Right now, Quraishi’s ruling applies only to the June primary election.
Kim declared his Senate candidacy shortly after U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted on public corruption charges in September. Two months later, Tammy Murphy. Gov. Phil Murphy’s wife, declared her candidacy for the Senate seat. Within days, she was endorsed by the Democratic leaders of the five counties with the most registered Democrats, immediately giving her an advantage. That outraged grassroots Democrats, who were backing Kim. He also has been leading in the polls and Murphy backed out of the race just before the filing deadline late last month. Two other Democrats — educator and labor advocate Patricia Campos-Medina and Newark activist Larry Hamm — are also running and could benefit from the decision.
— Graphics by Colleen O’Dea
