A rush to change state law on ballot access appears to be Trenton lawmakers’ bid to make campaigning tougher for their challengers. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
Those sneaky little devils in Trenton are at it again.
Legislative leaders, bruised by the loss of the county line and unable to figure out a non-unconstitutional way to replicate it, have decided simply to put a larger roadblock in front of would-be candidates seeking to get on the ballot.
On Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy gave their move to shift the goalposts his approval by signing their bill that hikes the number of voter signatures candidates must get on petitions needed to secure their names on the ballot.
Before, a Democrat or Republican seeking to become governor would need signatures from 1,000 registered voters. Now, the total is 2,000. If you want to run in a primary for the Assembly, you used to need 100 signatures. Now you need 250.
This isn’t necessarily bad. Michigan, which has a population a bit larger than New Jersey’s, has far higher signature thresholds than we do for would-be candidates (15,000 to run for governor and 500 to run for a legislative seat). In Virginia, which has a slightly smaller population, you need 10,000 signatures to run for governor and between 125 and 250 signatures to run for a legislative seat. There’s nothing wrong with aligning New Jersey’s ballot access threshold with those of other states.
What is bad is the timing. Though it only passed the Legislature last week, lawmakers made it effective starting with this June’s primaries. That’s when the governor’s race and all 80 Assembly races will be on the ballot, among other things.
This is obscene. Some candidates have already picked up the necessary petitions and started gathering signatures — now the Legislature and governor drop in to say, we’re going to more than double your workload.
“There’s room for a good faith debate about the ballot-access requirement, but that’s not what this is,” said Katie Brennan, a Democrat who is seeking an Assembly seat in Hudson County’s 32nd District. “The proposal is a transparent attempt to replace the line on the ballot with barriers to entry.”
Correct. Now that party leaders don’t have the county line — our uniquely New Jersey way of organizing ballots that gave party-backed candidates better ballot placement — they had to find some other way to limit competition.
Brian K. Everett, a Democrat challenging incumbent Democrats for an Assembly seat in South Jersey’s 4th District, is also critical of the new law, though he also doesn’t think the new signature requirements are too high.
“But it is another thing to then just go ahead and do it while the election cycle is live,” Everett said. “All these different stars have sort of aligned where they’ve lost the county-line ballot, and this is a small way to move the goalposts again.”
Bill sponsor Assemblyman Lou Greenwald (D-Camden) argues that serious candidates will have no trouble getting the higher number of signatures. In an interview, Greenwald said when the Legislature passed the bill last week, there were 54 days until the deadline to file petitions, leaving plenty of time for Assembly hopefuls to gather an additional 150 signatures.
“That’s less than three signatures a day. I could have gotten six signatures during this phone call,” he told me.
Greenwald indicated the change would benefit non-incumbents hoping to win election to the Legislature, not hurt their chances.
“The more people you talk to, the more people you’re going to resonate with,” he said. “If you can’t get 250 signatures, you shouldn’t run.”
This is a fair argument. But why make the change now? Greenwald has griped that the law on petition signature thresholds hasn’t changed in 90 years — so why the rush to make the change in the months before a major election, when petitions have already been distributed to some candidates? At one point during our conversation, Greenwald told me if he were a non-incumbent, he would just collect whatever signatures the state told him to collect because “you give me the rules of the game and I play by those rules.” But what the state is telling candidates with this new law is the Legislature and governor can decide to make up new rules even after the game has started.
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