The push to redesign primary ballots come as counties move to bar county-line ballots that have been criticized as unconstitutional. (Daniella Heminghaus for New Jersey Monitor)
Witnesses urged lawmakers on a special legislative committee regarding ballot design to adopt office-block ballots and cautioned against adding much information to the ballots at the panel’s second hearing Thursday.
The hearing, which was the first to accept the public’s testimony on how to redesign New Jersey’s ballots, follows a federal judge’s order that barred the use of party-line primary ballots, which group certain candidates into a single row or column. Critics have said party-line ballots give some candidates an unfair advantage.
“While the courts have ruled and made their opinion known, it is now on us as a legislature to begin the fact-finding process of talking to experts, talking to the public, gathering as much information as possible and coming up with a bill that not only adheres to the law but is practically implementable,” said Assemblyman Al Barlas (R-Essex), the committee’s Republican co-chair.
In March, U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi barred 19 of New Jersey’s counties from printing party-line ballots and ordered them to design ballots that group candidates by the office they are seeking. The order came after Rep. Andy Kim (D-03) filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of party-line ballots (Kim was elected to the U.S. Senate Tuesday).
Lawmakers on Thursday asked whether ballots, and general election ballots in particular, should note whether a candidate is an incumbent, something critics said would improperly sway voters.
Peter Chen, senior policy analyst at progressive think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective, said that noting incumbency on the ballot “hints this candidate is special, above other candidates.”
“That’s bad. We don’t want to indicate that kind of information,” Chen said.
Some witnesses urged against allowing for running mates for the same office — say, two people seeking two separate Assembly seats — to be grouped in a bracket on ballots. Such candidates should have their ballot placement decided individually in random draws for each of their voting districts, they said.
At present, many candidates for local offices — like county commission, school board, and municipal governing bodies — have their ballot positions drawn as a single slate.
Julia Sass Rubin, director of the public policy program at Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and an expert witness in the lawsuit that spurred Quraishi’s order, said any ballot that connects two separate candidates “could influence which ones voters select and that, by definition, would not be a fair ballot.”
Rubin urged against a ballot design similar to one in Connecticut that automatically awards party-endorsed candidates the top ballot position, warning that it would unduly favor those with party backing.
“I think it’s still a very unfair ballot,” Rubin said. “I would say let’s go for a fair ballot.”
Statements submitted by candidates and posted publicly to government websites could serve as a stand-in to help inform voters about party backing and policy proposals, and campaigns themselves could publicize endorsements, witnesses said.
They also called for ballot draws to be conducted electronically, arguing the system would be faster and more random than hand draws that clerks conduct now, while also making ballot draws for individual districts more feasible.
Candidate names should also be presented with normal capitalization — in place of the fully uppercase fonts used on some ballots — and flushed left to improve readability, said Chen and Lisa Vandever, co-leader of Indivisible Rahway.
Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Passaic) said the panel would hold its next hearing on Nov. 12 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. The panel met remotely on Thursday and in person at the Statehouse in Trenton last week.
At least one of the panel’s hearings will be held in evening hours to allow residents who work during the day to attend, Barlas said.
“We as lawmakers are committed to writing legislation that will comply with the court’s order, but before we do that, we want to hear from you. We want as much information as possible to help us as we take the next steps,” Wimberly said.
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