Before seeking a seat in Congress in this year’s 12th Congressional District race in central New Jersey, Sue Altman helped lead the legal fight that ended the “county line,’’ an archaic balloting system that discouraged outsiders and reformers from running in primaries.
Now the county line is gone — and the outsiders are flooding the primaries. The change has brought about more democracy — and chaos. Mostly boring, uncompetitive, low-turnout contests for otherwise “safe” seats now look like free-for-alls…
“If you assume that the county line would have given those people a huge advantage, you would essentially come down to who came from the largest piece of the district,” said Julia Sass Rubin, associate dean of academic programs at Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, who has endorsed Altman.
“Right now is that a better system than allowing the voters to decide who’s going to win by actually choosing from the candidates? I would argue not,” said Sass Rubin, who worked with Altman to lead the campaign to scrap the line system.