New Jersey ballots will look different this year. Here’s what’s being considered.

After a federal judge ruled that New Jersey’s ballot design was likely unconstitutional, state lawmakers found themselves recreating the rules of the ballot in what one expert called the most drastic ballot redesign happening in this political moment.

State lawmakers have been navigating a hefty question: What makes a fair ballot?

And those watching have asked, how far from tradition are elected officials willing to stray when their own political future is in play?

The stakes are high. With the old system gone, candidates with establishment support lose the advantage the old county line system gave them, incentivizing more candidates to throw their hat into the ring. In the first set of primaries without the line from the get-go, at least 10 serious candidates are making bids for governor.

“This is about the reinvigoration of our political system and restoring voter choice and voter confidence in our electoral system and it’s an exciting moment that hopefully will bring a lot of fresh political blood in the system,” said Antoinette Miles, the director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, which filed a lawsuit over the county line in 2020.

For decades, “the line” reigned over ballots in most New Jersey counties. The design grouped candidates together by endorsement from county party groups, giving politicians favored by county parties a privileged placement. Despite years of outcry from reform-minded advocates, candidates running without establishment support were placed off to the side and on more obscure portions of the ballot known as “ballot Siberia.”

That system fell apart last year after Democratic Sen. Andy Kim and Democratic congressional candidates Sarah Schoengood and Carolyn Rush argued in court that the design violated their constitutional rights, convincing a federal judge to order the Democratic primary ballots to be redone without the line.

In the fall, New Jersey legislators began an official remake forming a committee on ballot design in the Assembly and convening hearings to gather input from experts and advocates.

“New Jersey is leading the pack on making — even considering — large-scale design questions,” Wendy Underhill, the director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislators, said at one of the hearings in October. " … New Jersey is really on its own thinking this through, sort of from scratch.”

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The Assembly passed a bill in December with a proposed design, and the state Senate introduced its own version last week. Members of the public will have a chance to comment at a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Legislators have shown they are willing to shift the legally challenged county line system for a format used by the vast majority of states that organizes candidates by office sought. But there are other pieces to the puzzle.

The New Jersey ballot traditionally allows candidates to have an endorsement or slogan listed alongside their name, which is part of how the county line identified itself.

Those in favor of slogans, including lawmakers who have included them in both ballot bills, argue they’re akin to listing a political party to inform voters who they align with most. But some good government advocates argue that slogans would be better off in campaign materials instead of in the voting booth.

The guidelines surrounding the six-word slogans, however, were up for debate, and lawmakers in both chambers agreed to forbid the name of a candidate running for another office in the primary to be included in the slogan, e.g. “X for governor” in their designs.

New Jersey county clerks are tasked with designing the ballot for their county as long as they follow the state’s parameters. The clerks manually draw names to determine where candidates are placed on the ballot, whether through a bingo-type machine or pulling names from a wooden box.

But even with the county line gone in last year’s Democratic primary, every county-endorsed candidate was listed first on the ballot in one Essex County district, raising eyebrows over the statistical improbability. In Orange, a township in Essex, a judge found that a clerk’s initial draw for a mayoral race was done unlawfully.

Fair ballot advocates have argued in support of using a computerized number generator instead, and say that the software to do so is accessible. But members of both chambers decided to leave the draws in the hands of the county clerks in their proposed designs.

Assemblymember Al Barlas, a Republican who co-chaired the bipartisan Select Committee on Ballot Design, said the state just isn’t “there yet” practically, in part because of the heightened security vetting needed for elections-related software. He said he believes digitized randomization will “eventually” be an option for future elections.

Advocates argued that rotating the order of candidates for each voting precinct would solve the problem of ballot placement unfairness. Barlas said a rotation system would also need more vetting and would complicate campaigning with sample ballots. He also contended that so much change at once could give voters “culture shock.”

The Assembly’s proposed design allows two candidates running for the same office to be grouped together on the ballot if they petition together for positions like state Assembly, which have two spots per district but are elected separately. These candidates would be drawn for a ballot spot together, and listed one after another with a matching slogan, but otherwise listed in the same way as other candidates.

The state Senate’s proposed design took that measure further, allowing clerks to format allied candidates differently to show they are associated by changing the spacing or ruling, essentially listing the two candidates in one box.

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Advocates against grouping argue that it has the same issues as the county line by pressuring people to run with another candidate and influencing voters on the ballot.

Rush, a co-complainant on Kim’s suit over the line, is campaigning with another candidate for Assembly but still believes they should be drawn for ballot positions separately. She argued in an interview Tuesday that it’s on the candidates, not the clerk, to inform voters about who they’re running with and what they’re about.

“I really think that the ballot should should be for people to come in and vote, not to be persuaded and then vote,” she said. “Hopefully you’ve, as a citizen, you’ve done your research, you’ve listened to what people have to say, and you’re making an informed decision. And if you’re not, shame on you. It’s not the county clerk’s position to guide you.”

Barlas argued that listing running mates together on the ballot adheres to the state’s constitutional right to associate — a right that plaintiffs used as part of their argument against the line, since it punished candidates who were not associated with others.

Josh Pasek, an expert witness in Kim’s lawsuit, said in an interview that this grouping would be the “lowest hanging fruit” for a lawsuit, because candidates pairing together have higher chances of a favorable ballot position, which has been found to influence voters.

“It’s not rocket science here,” Pasek said. “ ... The real question at the end of the day is: is New Jersey that committed to maintaining these roles for county parties that it’s willing to endure what I’m sure are likely to be more lawsuits about it?”