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…
“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.
