Judge Orders New Jersey to Stop With the Terrible Ballot Design

Photo: Mike Catalini/AP

New Jerseyans will likely see a new ballot design — one that’s more like the other 49 states — when they head to the voting booth for a June 4 primary.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Zahid N. Quraishi ruled in favor of a lawsuit challenging the state’s longstanding, unique, and divisive “county line” ballot system. “Plaintiffs have put forth credible evidence not only that their constitutional rights are violated by the present ballot design used in New Jersey, which is used in no other state in the country …” he wrote in his 49-page ruling, “but that Defendants would suffer minimal harm in implementing the ballot design requested by Plaintiffs.”

In 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties, candidates are positioned on the ballot according to party endorsements, which allows powerful regional political leaders to give more favorable positioning to the candidates they support. In a 2023 study, Rutgers University professor Julia Sass Rubin found that candidates who ran on at least one county line performed an average of 38 percent better in their races.

Quraishi’s order mandates that the state begin using what’s known as an “office-block ballot,” which organizes candidates by the office they’re running for and employs a randomized system to determine the order of the names.

The lawsuit was first brought in February by Congressman Andy Kim, who is currently pursuing a bid for Bob Menendez’s seat in the U.S. Senate. At the time, Kim was locked in a tough primary battle with New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy, who had received the support of the majority of the state’s congressional delegation. Kim argued that the county-line system heavily favored more politically connected candidates, while Murphy’s team called the lawsuit a “hypocritical stunt.” After Murphy suspended her campaign last week, Kim’s campaign indicated that he intended to continue his lawsuit even as he stood to benefit from Murphy’s exit and newly surrendered ballot lines.

On Friday, Kim praised the ruling. “Today’s decision is a victory for a fairer, more democratic politics in New Jersey. It’s a victory built from the incredible grassroots work of activists across our state who saw an undemocratic system marginalizing the voices of voters, and worked tirelessly to fix it,” he said in a statement.

Though Kim will be far less affected by the ruling than he would have been if Murphy hadn’t dropped out, the design change might shake up other races. The New Jersey Globe reports that it may eliminate an advantage for candidates like Democratic congressman Rob Menendez, the son of Senator Menendez, as well as Republican U.S. Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw, who both had won several county lines already. Those gains are expected to vanish as the new ballots go into effect.