A Salem County ballot from 2020 that does not use the controversial county-line design, which has been deemed likely unconstitutional by federal judges.
A special Assembly committee in a unanimous vote Monday approved a controversial overhaul of New Jersey ballots that will write the county line out of state law.
The bill, which follows a federal court decision that found New Jersey’s county-line system — a ballot design that groups candidates for different offices by party endorsement — is likely unconstitutional. If approved by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor, the bill could reshape primaries in a state where machine politics are dominant.
“We’re sure there are other things people think need to be considered on this issue. However, I am proud of our measured approach in addressing something that needed to be solved quickly,” said Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Passaic), the panel’s Democratic co-chair.
The legislation would require New Jersey’s county clerks to design office-block ballots that group candidates by the office they are seeking and bar bracketing between candidates seeking different offices. Lawmakers eliminated a controversial provision of the bill that would have, sponsors said inadvertently, barred office seekers without official party backing from stating their party affiliation in their ballot slogans.
The bill would also ban incongruous separations between candidates seeking the same office, ending a practice colloquially known as “ballot Siberia.”
But it would allow candidates to run bracketed on a slate for a single office and have their names drawn as a group rather than individually, which some critics said could still allow party organizations to put their thumbs on the scale. The bill would not require clerks to rotate candidates on the ballot depending on voting district, something some witnesses who have testified in prior hearings of the committee said would have allowed every candidate to have a chance at top billing.
“Voters in this state have said very clearly in the testimonies in the previous hearings that they want a fair ballot, and that is a very simple ballot with no bracketing, no slogans, and a rotating order. These are the three aspects that are still missing from this bill,” said Yael Niv, president of the Good Government Coalition of New Jersey.
New Jersey’s county-line system was at the center of a closely watched lawsuit earlier this year filed by now-Sen. Andy Kim (D), who along with two others alleged the system unconstitutionally infringes on rights to free association. U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi ruled Kim would likely succeed at trial and barred the county line from ballots in this year’s Democratic primaries.
It’s not clear whether all the bill’s provisions would survive judicial scrutiny. Quraishi’s order barred clerks from conducting ballot draws where each candidate’s name was not drawn individually for each office.
Amendments approved at Monday’s hearing removed language that would have prohibited candidates from naming their political party in ballot slogans without the consent of their county political party. Critics of that provision noted that provision would keep some candidates from using the names of established groups — like South Jersey Progressive Democrats — in their ballot slogans.
That language was replaced with other provisions that would allow the secretary of state, municipal clerk, or county clerk — depending on the office sought — to reject slogans they find to be too similar to ones used by other candidates. Lawmakers said this was a bid to keep deception off the ballot.
New Jersey’s system of six-word ballot slogans would persist under the bill, allowing party endorsements to continue appearing on primary ballots. Advocates had pushed for the end of slogans, arguing they do little to educate voters on candidates and would maintain parties’ outsized role in determining primary results.
“My concern would be not that they would be misleading by saying they’re endorsed and they’re not. My concerns there would be that it overtly puts the endorsement on the ballot, and the ballot should not be a way of communicating the endorsement,” said Julia Sass Rubin, a Rutgers professor who has studied the line’s impact on election results.
Candidates whose slogans are waylaid by such a decision could appeal to the state Superior Court on an expedited basis, though the bill does not lay out a process for election officials to determine which slogan needs to be changed when two are too similar.
Language in the bill would explicitly allow candidates to list their party affiliation in their slogans.
The bill would bar candidates from using the names of candidates for other offices in their ballot slogans, a measure some viewed as targeted at Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a Democrat who is recruiting legislative candidates as running mates as he mounts a bid for the state’s governorship in 2025.
Other changes sought by advocates, including candidate statements that could more fully explain their platforms, were not included in the bill.
“Six words are not an informed electorate. What we need is a booklet with information about each candidate and or a website where information can be found,” Niv said, adding, “As you said, we don’t allow electioneering and we don’t need electioneering information on the ballot.”
Lawmakers said procurement rules surrounding voting equipment left too little time to enact rotating electronic ballot draws in time for 2025’s primaries but left the door open to such changes in the future.
The bill would require state election workers to submit a report to lawmakers and the governor laying out possible improvements to New Jersey’s balloting within 180 days after the second primary election following its enactment.
“If there is a problem, we will have a report with empirical evidence to make the necessary changes,” said Assemblyman Al Barlas (R-Essex), the committee’s Republican co-chair.
Though the full Assembly is due to vote on the bill at its Thursday session, the legislation’s path through the Senate is less clear. No companion had been introduced in that chamber by the time of the Assembly committee’s vote, and Senate lawmakers have sought not to recreate their Assembly counterparts’ hearing process.
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