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“Most political actors and donors are waiting to see how this issue plays out over the next few years before doing anything that may upset the county party organizations,” Sass Rubin said.

With more mail-in ballots left to count, it’s still too early to tell what impact the suspension of the party line may have had on Democratic candidates.

Rubin says Kim benefitted from good timing — he was the right candidate at the right political moment. “He definitely had the right framing for people to believe that he is a reformer, and he was willing to take that risk and go up against the system.”

“One of the impacts is that more people will get into primaries to run,” said Rubin. “But you’re not seeing that in this cycle because the decision came after the cutoff to file to run this cycle.”

“I think the most immediate impact will be more people will run for office,” Rubin said. “Not this election cycle, because the deadline has already passed. But I think we will see more people running going forward, and I think we will see a much more diverse slate of candidates. You have an overwhelmingly male and white legislature, and I think the county line has a big role in that.”

The system groups candidates running on tickets into single lines or columns, meaning that the many candidates endorsed by county political organizations appear together with ticket-leaders like President Joe Biden. Candidates running alone or on smaller slates usually appear further off to the right or down the ballot, outside of the large groupings that signal to voters that they’re the legitimate party candidates. Research by Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin shows the preferential ballot placement gives candidates an advantage that is difficult to beat.

“It’s kind of ridiculous that we’re still having a clerk draw names out of a drum when there are computers that could randomize this in a much more scientific way, and would be cheating-proof, essentially,” says Julia Sass Rubin,