A group of former candidates and progressive activists are throwing their weight behind a lawsuit that argues New Jersey’s ballot design is unconstitutional.
New Jersey is the only state in the country that allows county party organizations—local political machines—to determine how the ballot is laid out in primary elections.
Candidates endorsed by the local machine are placed on what’s called “the county line.” It’s a column on the primary ballot that places candidates in smaller races right under better-known candidates, like the governor or a U.S senator. Studies have shown that placement on the county line confers a clear electoral advantage for the machine’s chosen candidates.
The ballot for Camden County
“Because the entire state legislature is beholden to the line and benefits from the line, it's nearly impossible to vote people out,” said Sue Altman, executive director of New Jersey Working Families Alliance. “The only recourse activists and outsiders have is litigation.”
Altman’s group is joining a federal lawsuit today that asks the court to rule the current system unconstitutional. The suit began with a largely unknown candidate, Christine Conforti, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year in Monmouth County Along with Altman, several other candidates are joining the suit, including Arati Kriebich, who challenged incumbent Rep. Josh Gottheimer for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 5th Congressional District last year.
Listen to Nancy Solomons’s report on WNYC:
The lawsuit points to several problems with ballot design in New Jersey.
“They may get stuck out in ballot Siberia, where they're located, multiple columns away from other candidates who are running for exactly the same office,” said Brett Pugach, an election attorney who is representing the plaintiffs.
Pugach says the design can also be confusing for voters when ballots list some candidates who are competing against each other in one column, but the endorsed candidate for that same office in a separate column. That frequently causes some voters to vote for two people running for the same office, disqualifying their ballot.
“It leads to a situation where candidates are kind of beholden to their county bosses more than they are representative of their constituents. And that's a fundamental problem,” Pugach said.
The plaintiffs want ballots to be designed like nearly every other place in the country, where candidates for a particular office are grouped together.
State Senator Nick Scutari of Union County is the chair of the Union County Democratic Committee. He argues the endorsement process and ballot design is more than fair, and in fact serves a value role in screening candidates for voters.
“I think it lends towards the best candidates. The organization takes the selection of candidates very seriously,” Scutari said. “It’s a democratic system made up of Democratic Party members who are all elected by Democratic primary voters.”
“If you are somebody who aspires for office, you have to go through and get approved by the establishment in order to be a candidate,” said John Wisniewski, who was a longtime state Assemblyman when he ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 2017.
Wisniewski was riding a wave of popularity and name recognition that year, after co-chairing the legislature’s investigation into the “Bridgegate” scandal that consumed much of former Gov. Chris Christie’s second-term.
But Wisniewski only won Salem County in the southwest corner of the state, far from his home district in Middlesex County. Not coincidentally, Salem County is one of only two New Jersey counties where the local party political machine doesn’t choose who gets the best position on the ballot. Wisniewski’s name appeared right at the top of the ballot’s left hand column.
Research shows that candidates on the County Line average a 35-point advantage. It’s a big reason why an incumbent state legislator hasn’t lost a primary in New Jersey since 2009.
Wisniewski supports the lawsuit because he doesn’t believe the legislature will ever vote to end an endorsement system that so clearly works to incumbents’ advantage.
“I ran for the Assembly 12 times, 11 successfully, and each time was as a candidate on the Middlesex County Democratic organization line. No doubt about it, in that respect, I was a beneficiary.”
This article has been updated to reflect that Union County actually does not have an open vote; and that candidates on the County Line have about a 35-point advantage.
