This story covers the second half of today’s hearing on the county line. See here for part one.
The hearing on Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown)’s lawsuit to take down the county organizational line concluded this afternoon with testimony from a diverse array of witnesses – among them Kim himself.
The case, which is before U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, revolves around the constitutionality of the line, the unique New Jersey ballot design system that lets county parties place their endorsed candidates in a shared row or column on primary ballots. Kim, who is running for U.S. Senate, and two Democratic U.S. House candidates are asking Quraishi to grant a preliminary injunction to abolish the line in time for this year’s primary election.
In response, attorneys representing the 19 county clerks Kim’s lawsuit names as defendants have argued that abolishing the county line would create havoc for New Jersey’s elections systems, and that the lawsuit is too late to feasibly make changes in time for this year’s primary. (New Jersey has 21 counties, but two of them don’t have county lines, and thus their clerks weren’t named as defendants.)
Quraishi gave few hints about which way he was leaning, though he did have some sharp questions for the defendants – and for New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, who sent a letter to the judge yesterday saying he wouldn’t defend the line. Most of those fireworks came in the first half of the marathon nine-hour hearing, before Quraishi ordered a lunch break.
The second half dove deeper into many of the technical disputes over the line, beginning with testimony from Ryan Macias, an elections administration expert who said that a line-free primary would be feasible in New Jersey even with the shortened timeframe. Immediately following him was Kim, whose Senate campaign was the impetus for the lawsuit.
Kim, who called for ending the county line shortly before announcing his Senate campaign last year, said that he learned very early on in his political career how important the line is. He ran on the county line in all three of his campaigns for the U.S. House, which he argued he needed to do in order to be a viable candidate.
“Despite my personal concerns about how this went, I felt I had no choice but to participate in the system,” Kim said.
His campaign for U.S. Senate has gone differently, with many of the state’s top party leaders instead supporting First Lady Tammy Murphy and granting their county’s lines to her instead. Kim, too, has won some county lines, but he said he wants himself, Murphy, and every other Senate candidate to run on an equal playing field.
“I’m not asking for any advantage for me,” he said. “All I’m asking for is for New Jersey to be in line with 49 other states in terms of pursuing an office-block style ballot that would allow us to have a fairer system here.”
Kim’s testimony also reflected a key part of his lawsuit’s argument: that the party line interferes in candidates’ right to freedom of association. Candidates running on the line are grouped with other candidates whom they may not know or support; this year, for example, Kim is set to share the Monmouth County Democratic line with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) even though Pallone supports Murphy.
“In some of the counties where I’ve been awarded the line, there are candidates that have also won the line in those counties that are actively working against my campaign,” Kim said. “That makes it very difficult for me to be on an endorsed candidate line with someone who has not been supportive of my campaign.”
In cross-examination, attorneys representing the state’s county clerks questioned the timeline of Kim’s lawsuit, which they have said came too late for any relief to be feasible this year.
Kim said that his campaign began having discussions about potential legal recourse against the line last November, and it had a report prepared examining whether a lawsuit could succeed on the merits. On February 10, Passaic County Democrats awarded their county line to Murphy in a private vote, which Kim said was the first case of specific harm to him; he filed his lawsuit two weeks later, on February 26.
The defendants’ attorneys also noted that off-the-line candidates have the ability to recruit slates of challengers to run alongside them, thus building a rival slate that has all the same bracketing and ballot access rights as party-endorsed slates. As a Senate candidate, though, Kim said that doing so statewide would be entirely unrealistic.
“You’re glossing over the significant effort that is [necessary] to create full brackets in 19 counties,” Kim said. “It would be a full-time job and then some just to be able to do that.”
Kim ultimately said that his lawsuit was about fostering democracy in New Jersey, a goal which he said the county line impedes.
“The whole point of democracy is to give people a choice, and to be able to have the decision be made by the people,” he said. “If there are elements that are limiting that choice … I believe that to be adverse to the pursuit of democracy.”
The county clerks’ argument against Kim’s suit largely revolved not around those high-minded questions of democracy, but rather around the logistics of implementing an entirely new method of conducting elections so close to the June 4 primary. To that effect, the clerks called up two witnesses – David Passante of Royal Printing Service and Monmouth County Clerk Christine Hanlon – to speak to the problems a sudden change in elections administration would cause.
Passante, who prints ballots for eleven counties – ten of which utilize the county line system – said that his company has developed consistent templates for each county’s ballots that it uses each year. Changing the design now, he said, would lead to “chaos” in the rush to lay out and print entirely new types of ballots.
“It really would turn our world upside down,” Passante testified. “It’s putting us into a situation of unfamiliarity.”
Passante estimated that it would take his company three to four weeks to deal with an office-block ballot design, not accounting for any delays that New Jersey’s two voting system providers might add into the process as they work to incorporate the new ballots. (Under questioning from Quraishi, though, Passante acknowledged that if a county clerk were to voluntarily decide to switch their preferred ballot design, his company would obey their request.)
Hanlon, meanwhile, said that from her perspective as county clerk, she was unsure of whether her office could handle the sudden implementation of an office-block design, especially given the sheer number of different offices and candidates that will be on Monmouth County ballots this year.
“For our primary election ballot, if I would have to change it, there is a design process that would need to be undertaken to determine where things go, whether the equipment and software that we have could accommodate changes to the ballots that we have right now,” Hanlon said.
But Andrew Appel, a Princeton professor of computer science called as a witness by Kim’s team, said that to his knowledge, New Jersey’s voting machines would be capable of handling office-block ballots, or ballots organized by political office rather than by party endorsement.
“The software that runs in the machines can accommodate office-block ballots without any changes at all,” Appel said.
The plaintiffs also called another academic witness, Julia Sass Rubin of Rutgers University, to testify on the extent to which the line can help or hurt candidates. Rubin’s prior research has found that running on the line can confer a huge advantage for candidates, and running without it is oftentimes a political death sentence.
The last witness of the night was Noah Dion, Kim’s campaign manager, who was asked about the campaign’s timeframe for deciding to file the lawsuit. Several other planned witnesses – including Sarah Schoengood and Carolyn Rush, two congressional candidates who are co-plaintiffs in Kim’s suit – were not able to testify before Quraishi ordered the hearing concluded.
Quraishi didn’t provide a timeframe for when he might issue a ruling, though as defendants repeatedly noted, the clock is ticking. New Jersey’s filing deadline is on March 25, the drawing for ballot positions is on April 4, and mail-in ballots have to be finalized by April 20.
If Quraishi does, in fact, find the line to be unconstitutional, it would send immediate shockwaves throughout the New Jersey political world – nowhere more so than in the ongoing Senate race. During his testimony, Kim said he didn’t necessarily set out to reshape state politics, only to be given a fair shot.
“I just wanted to run for this Senate seat,” he said. “I don’t want to have to do this… Unfortunately, I have to, given the system here in New Jersey.”