Kim, fellow anti-line activists say some issues still need resolving in county line lawsuit

Discussion in New Jersey political circles of the county line – the now-defunct ballot design system that gave an upper hand to party-endorsed candidates – may have petered out in the last few months, but Senator Andy Kim and his fellow enemies of the line say there are still some parts of New Jersey’s new ballot design status quo that need resolving.

In response to a lawsuit from Kim during his then-ongoing Senate primary campaign last year, District Judge Zahid Quraishi issued a preliminary injunction against the use of the county line in the 2024 Democratic primary. Pre-empting a longer court battle, nearly every New Jersey county clerk then reached settlement agreements limiting their ability to use county line-style ballots in the future.

Two county clerks, however, never signed onto those agreements: Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi and Bergen County Clerk John Hogan. It’s not entirely clear why those two clerks in particular remain holdouts, though Quraishi said in an August order that “it appears to be because they are averse to paying the attorneys’ fees provided for by statute.”

Separately, the State Legislature passed a bill officially codifying more neutral office-block ballots in New Jersey primaries, and Gov. Phil Murphy signed it into law in March of this year. That law, however, drew scrutiny from Quraishi, who wrote in June that the law may have “unconstitutional features” and faulted the legislature for its “reluctance to act.”

Kim echoed that opinion in his filing from late last week, saying that the new ballot law’s provisions regarding bracketing (in which multiple candidates running as a team for the same office are placed together) are “detrimental” and that some county clerks chose not to follow every part of the law when designing 2025 primary ballots.

“Absent a judicial injunction, it is my opinion as an officeholder since January 2019, that the law is at risk of being modified or repealed to the detriment of candidates like me, meaning it is not ‘absolutely clear’ that the clerks’ wrongful behavior, enjoined in the 2024 election, could not reasonably be expected to recur,” Kim wrote.

Kim specifically warned that, given the legislature’s past hesitance to address ballot reform – it took nearly a year for lawmakers to pass the new law after Quraishi first ruled against the county line – there’s no guarantee that legislators won’t try to backtrack in the future, especially during a chaotic lame-duck session.

“Without a permanent injunction from this Court, the Legislature will be at liberty to repeal or modify the [new ballot law] and deprive voters of even its minimal protections,” Kim stated. “The risk of legislative gamesmanship is even more acute during lame-duck or budget season lawmaking activity, where the risk of a surreptitious and nontransparent bill attempting to restore the line is especially acute.”

Kim’s filing comes specifically in response to a request from Quraishi that the lawsuit’s plaintiffs declare why they continue to face potential harm from ballot design laws if their own campaigns are over. Kim said that he plans on running for re-election in 2030, and a number of other plaintiffs in Kim’s case and in the separate Conforti case, which had been slowly proceeding since 2020, said they too plan to seek a variety of offices in the future.

Some of those offices, including Kim’s statewide Senate seat, overlap with Bergen and Union Counties, the two counties where there is still no official judicial injunction preventing local clerks from using county-line ballots. Rajoppi and Hogan will have until October 10 to file their replies.