Preliminary numbers suggests voter turnout reached historic lows in the election with only 21 percent of voters showing up. The Pew Research Center says New Jersey ranks 39 in the nation in both percentage of eligible voters registered and percentage of voters who actually vote. A staggering 1.6 million residents aren’t registered at all. The NJ Democracy Act that would make registration and voting easier and more widely accessible has been sitting on Governor Christie’s desk since June and he’s not expected to sign the bill into law. Executive Director of NJ Working Families Analilia Mejia joins NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams to discuss the act.
NJ Working Families did a lot of work to get the bill passed and Mejia says they’re prepared to continue to push for the governor to sign. If he doesn’t, “We want to take it to the voters. We want to take it to the ballot,” she said.
The New Jersey Democracy Act sets out to expand access for New Jerseyans. “It increases the time for early voting. It ensures that you can update your information online,” she said. “You can file your taxes online. We can do our banking online. Why not change your voter registration? But more importantly it sets automatically voter registration. You get your drivers license, you interact with the state agency, you’re able to get registered to vote instantly.”
She’s says there’s a number of issues in our state that lead to low voter registration and voter turnout. “I would argue that one of the biggest issues is that we have what we would call a non-representative government. There are a couple polls that came out that showed that New Jersey’s legislature skews older, richer, whiter than most New Jersey residents. When you feel that disconnect with your elected officials, maybe they’re not passing laws that represent your interests, and you feel disengaged.”
She says that if voters don’t feel that elected officials are really paying attention to their issues, then they’re not going to want to pay attention to what goes on in the government. “Take for example earned sick days,” Mejia said. Elizabeth is the most recent to join a handful of towns that have now passed sick leave laws. “It’s an issue that polls 80 percent, upwards of mid-80s in our state. When we put it on the ballot it passes by 75, 85 percent of the vote. Again it’s one of these issues of lack of representative government. If you have a measure that is so popular and it still is debated by our legislature whether or not it works, that disconnect really upsets voters and makes them walk away from the process.”