In a landmark ruling Friday, a federal judge ordered New Jersey to redesign its election ballots ahead of the June primary, a longtime source of voting rights for the state’s Democratic and Republican political machines. was completely overturned.
The ruling by Judge Zahid N. Quraishi of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey is expected to fundamentally reshape New Jersey politics.
“The integrity of the democratic process leading up to the primary election is at stake,” Judge Quraishi wrote in his 49-page ruling.
Candidates who filed suit seeking ballot redesign have proven that their “Constitutional rights are being violated by the current ballot design,” he added.
At issue is the unique way New Jersey designs its primary ballots, a system that gives establishment candidates a huge advantage at the expense of outsiders. In most counties, the ballot does not group candidates based on the office they are running for, but rather in the same column based on the support of party leaders.
The impact of Judge Quraishi’s ruling casts a shadow over the high-stakes race to replace Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is accused of accepting bribes in exchange for political favors.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who is running for Mr. Menendez’s seat, has made concerns about voting fairness a defining theme of his campaign and last month filed a joint lawsuit with two other candidates. That led to Friday’s judicial decision.
Kim said of the ruling, “It was built on the incredible grassroots work of activists across the state who saw how an undemocratic system marginalized the voices of voters and worked tirelessly to correct it. It’s a great victory.”
Tammy Murphy, wife of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, has been Kim’s chief opponent in the Senate for several months. Murphy’s path to victory lies in her connection to her husband, who has enough influence to ensure her name is among the front-runners on the June 4 primary ballot in the state’s most populous city. It relied heavily on support from influential Democratic Party leaders. county.
Although Mr. Murphy withdrew from the race on Sunday, the legal battle over the design of the ballot, a mundane but fundamental component of New Jersey’s voting rights, continued to dominate the state’s political discourse.
Judge Quraishi’s verdict was met with cheers of celebration. Self snap at least one popup cocktail party From New Jersey residents who have been fighting to eliminate the ballot design for years.
Yael Blomberg, one of a group of lawyers who first filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the current ballot design in 2020, called Judge Quraishi’s ruling “a landmark victory for fair elections.” called.
“Voters will finally have a meaningful choice,” said Antoinette Miles, who heads the state chapter of the left-leaning group Working Families, which collected donations from supporters to cover the initial legal costs. Told. “Candidates, regardless of their background, will finally be able to enter politics on their own terms.
“And ultimately we will have a system in which officials are accountable to voters rather than to internal party wishes.”
In 19 of the state’s 21 counties, local political leaders have for decades assembled their preferred candidates for each office in prominent rows or columns on the primary ballot. In New Jersey, this location is known simply as “The Line.” The names of primary challengers appear on the side or edge of the ballot, which candidates refer to as the “Siberia of Ballots.”
The candidate whose name appears on the county line usually wins. This allows county political leaders to use voting rankings to reward or punish candidates or encourage loyalty. It also gives them significant control over policy-making, employment, and government contracts, while reducing voters’ ability to sway elections and hold elected officials accountable.
Kim asked Judge Quraishi to instead require election officials to display the names of all candidates running for each open position in separate sections of the ballot, as is done in 49 other states. I asked the council to make a request.
On Friday, a judge agreed to do just that.
The county’s political parties and election officials in charge of preparing and printing ballots have hired about 100 lawyers, most of them paid by taxpayers, to vigorously defend the practices that Mr. Kim has argued are unconstitutional. was.
Attorney Jack Carbone, one of those defending the practice, said clerks were concerned about whether they would be able to comply with the judge’s order in time for the June 4 election. By law, he must start shipping mail-in ballots within a month.
Carbone said he and other attorneys are “considering” whether to appeal the verdict.
“Many county clerks have serious concerns about the feasibility of complying with the court’s order, as ballots must be printed within a week and voting must begin in 20 days,” he said in a statement. “I’m embracing it,” he said.
In testimony during a daylong hearing in Judge Quraishi’s courtroom, Mr. Kim, 41, argued that if the ballots are not redesigned before the primaries, they risk irreparable harm.
Hours before the March 18 hearing, state Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, a Democrat and longtime ally of the governor, sent a letter to Judge Quraishi agreeing that the ballot design was unconstitutional. said.
Murphy withdrew from the race a week later.
Lawyers for the county’s political leaders, who want to restore the ballot’s design advantages, argued that Murphy’s decision to withdraw from the race removed the urgency of Kim’s request. .
Judge Quraishi called this argument “specious at best.”
The decision is expected to signal a dramatic change in New Jersey, where political leaders are often uninfluenced by voters’ sentiments.
Just this week, Sal Bonacorso, the Republican mayor of Clark, N.J., who was recorded on an audio recording in 2020 using a racial slur and was later indicted on unrelated charges by Platkin, is running for re-election as a member of his party. He achieved the status of a prominent voter.
A study by professors at Rutgers University and Princeton University shows that county lines often give candidates an insurmountable advantage.
One analysis by Julia Sass Rubin, associate dean of the Edward J. Bluestein School of Planning and Policy at Rutgers University, found that being on a county line gave a candidate for Congress a 38 percentage point advantage.
Kim’s lawsuit also included real-time experiments demonstrating the effectiveness of ballot design by Josh Pasek, a University of Michigan professor who has written about voter behavior. Dr. Pasek distributed sample ballots to more than 600 New Jersey Democratic voters, but alternated where Kim’s, Murphy’s, and other candidates’ names appeared.
He concluded that county lines “strongly steered” voters towards particular candidates.
Democratic mayors of the state’s two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, had called for an end to the county line ballot design. Both mayors are campaigning for the Democratic Party’s nomination in next year’s gubernatorial election and praised the judge’s decision.
“The ‘red line’ was and is anti-democratic,” said Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka. “As parties, we always knew it was wrong, and yet we lived with it for decades.”
Jersey City Mayor Stephen Fulop called the judge’s decision “a victory for the people.”
“Today, New Jersey took a major step toward a fairer and more representative electoral system, moving away from the political bossism and corruption that has plagued our state for far too long,” Fulop said.