Now that the county line is headed to the dustbin of state history, leaders of the Assembly have created a bipartisan committee that will explore new ways to design ballots for New Jersey primaries.
The Legislature, which often operates with dead-of-night efficiency, now wants to hear from everybody — election experts, good government advocates who have led the crusade against the antiquated county line ballot and “hardworking professionals who ensure we have fair elections.” The lawmakers want to do their homework on this one, it seems.
They plan to bring in an expert on ballot design to testify. County election officials from both parties will be summoned to explain the lessons learned from the 2024 primary, when a federal judge ruled out the old county line system and ordered new — and fairer — block ballot designs for the Democratic primary.
This may sound like a topic for nerd insomniacs who watch C-SPAN panel discussions at 2 a.m., but, in fact, the crumbling of the line was a seismic moment in New Jersey politics. It was the powerful, coveted tool party bosses used for decades to ensure smooth, almost automatic victories for their preferred candidates…
Julia Sass Rubin, the Rutgers professor whose research into the county line became crucial evidence in Kim’s lawsuit, also had doubts about the Legislature’s vow to lead the way to a new day of ballot reform.
Still, Sass Rubin says Quraishi’s ruling looms as an important backstop over the panel. Any questionable remedies pursued by the Legislature would most likely have to comport with Quraishi’s order — as Coughlin indicated. And it just may open the door to a wider discussion of reform. Already, activists are compiling wish lists for discussion and reform.
Sass Rubin would like to see the ballot draw of names be handled by computer, a move that would eliminate the potential of human error or chicanery. And she argues that the names in the ballot blocks should be randomized — or shuffled so that random candidates are listed first in the block on a district-by-district basis. That way, she says, no single candidate gets the advantage of being listed first throughout the town or voting area.
“The line is just one of the ways you can distort the ballot,” she said. “So I think we just have to be incredibly vigilant, and there’s good reason to be concerned.”
