“Anything that’s not a clean ballot in terms of just a list of candidates in an office block style — nothing differentiating them — is not ideal,” said Julia Sass Rubin, a Rutgers associate professor who has done extensive research on the ballot design’s impact.
Topic
voting
Members of the public chime in on lawmakers’ push to redesign ballots
“I think it’s still a very unfair ballot,” Rubin said. “I would say let’s go for a fair ballot.”
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“The line is just one of the ways you can distort the ballot,” Julia Sass Rubin said. “So I think we just have to be incredibly vigilant, and there’s good reason to be concerned.”
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“The line is just one of the ways you can distort the ballot,” Julia Sass Rubin said. “So I think we just have to be incredibly vigilant, and there’s good reason to be concerned.”
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“[Fighting the challenges] doesn’t seem that it’s a good use of taxpayer dollars, and I suspect that most taxpayers would not want their taxpayer dollars spent that way,” Rubin said. “But I suspect that if more county clerks choose to settle, that it will impact Republicans the same way.
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“It’s early as the votes are still being counted but it certainly looks like not having a county line shakes things up, especially in the less high-profile races where the county line matters the most,” said Julia Sass Rubin
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”