Progressive activists across New Jersey are mounting a campaign to change the way election ballots are designed because, they say, the current system gives preferential treatment to political insiders and the donors who support their campaigns.
“New Jersey's ballot is such a hot mess,” said Sue Altman, director of New Jersey Working Families. “They vary county by county, and each county has its own process to decide who gets the preferential treatment on the ballot.”
New Jersey is holding its first statewide vote-by-mail primary on July 7th. Even though COVID-19 has made 2020 a difficult and unusual election year all over the country, the Garden State has its own unique problems that predate the pandemic.
A coalition of activists, election lawyers, researchers, and public policy experts say the state has the most convoluted ballot design in the whole country.
“I am not seeing anything that even closely resembles what we do,” said Julia Sass Rubin, professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She collected ballot samples from multiple counties in all 50 states.
Even though there is variety, every other state has a ballot that lists the names of every candidate under or to the side of the name of the office for which they are running.
Listen to Nancy Solomon's report on WNYC:
In New Jersey, most ballots group candidates endorsed by the party establishment in each county. It’s called “the line” and it’s the most valuable commodity in New Jersey politics. The endorsed candidates from the Democratic committee in each county are listed in one column, with the best-known names at the top of the ticket.
Lesser known candidates gain legitimacy and trust by appearing on “the line,” Rubin outlined in a new report released Monday. For instance, this year, a typical party-endorsed line would start with Joe Biden and Cory Booker, then the endorsed candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, then county freeholders and so on.
“You're going to go with the top of the column, right? So you trust this person there. You're voting for Biden and you're just going to go naturally down that column."
Rubin and activists say the Democratic primary in the Second Congressional District illustrates the problems with county endorsements and ballot design. The south Jersey district stretches from Atlantic City to Cape May and cuts across eight different counties. The Democratic primary is competitive this year because the incumbent, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, switched to the Republican Party last December.
The coalition of progressive activists are not just fighting the way ballots are designed, they are taking aim at the political machine controlled by George Norcross III, an unelected insurance executive who is widely considered one of the most powerful people in New Jersey.
In the 2nd Congressional district, Montclair State professor Brigid Callahan Harrison received endorsements from members of Norcross’s powerful political machine the day after she announced her candidacy. Altman and other activists are supporting her challenger, Amy Kennedy, who is married to Patrick Kennedy, a scion of a storied political family. But because she is fighting against the machine, she is the outsider in this race. The activists say the ballots in the district tell the story.
“What happened to Amy Kennedy is actually a beautiful case study in all the different things that could possibly happen across eight different counties,” Altman said.
Kennedy beat the machine for the endorsement in Atlantic County, so she’s on the county line under Biden. But Senator Cory Booker then took himself off the line, to top the column over Callahan Harrison.
In Cumberland County, Callahan-Harrison has the party committee endorsement and Kennedy is running with 3 incumbent county freeholders, all African-American. The county party pushed them six columns over to the right, in what Altman calls “ballot Siberia.”
“So it really is going to be an Easter egg hunt to find Amy Kennedy on the ballot in Cumberland County,” Altman said.
And then there’s Camden County, the center of power for the Norcross machine.
Callahan Harrison has the county line under Biden, where voters can pick every candidate in the column. Kennedy is in the column under Bernie Sanders, but she’s there along with the other Democrats running for the same seat.
Altman said it’s a clever trick designed to confuse voters. Supporters of Callahan Harrison can vote for every candidate in column 2, but voters who are choosing any of her Democratic challengers, can only vote for one of them in column 3.
“If you're a Bernie Sanders person and you vote for Bernie Sanders and then you just continue down the line, you could actually accidentally vote for multiple congressional candidates,” Altman said. “It says vote for one, but it's way over on the left hand side. And you could easily see how somebody could mark a vote for all of those candidates, which would completely disqualify that entire ballot.”
In New Jersey, county clerks have the power to design the ballot. The reformers say this is a key problem, because county clerks are elected officials themselves, which can mean they need the endorsement of the party machine as well.
But Deputy Camden County Clerk John Schmidt insisted there’s nothing nefarious about having Callahan Harrison in the column under Biden and Booker, and all the other congressional candidates in the same column under Bernie Sanders.
“We just don't have the room on that, on the ballot face, which drives everything,” Schmidt said.
Rubin, the Rutgers professor, will be watching the election results and expects to provide an analysis on the impact of each different ballot in the 2nd Congressional District. That will include a comparison with the Salem County ballot, which is also in the district, and happens to be the one Democratic ballot that does not give preferential treatment to endorsed candidates. In fact, it has the same kind of ballot that most voters have across the country, one that lists all candidates for each office.
The coalition fighting the ballots doesn’t expect the state legislature to pass any reforms. Afterall, elected officials all over the state benefit from the endorsement system. Instead, Rubin expects to see the activists take their fight to the courts.
“This will need to be challenged constitutionally,” Rubin said.
