U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi has denied an effort by New Jersey’s county clerks to obtain a stay on his own ruling eliminating county organizational lines in this year’s Democratic primary.
Last week, Quraishi granted Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) and two other congressional candidates a preliminary injunction prohibiting the use of the county line, the ballot design system that groups party-endorsed candidates together, in this year’s Democratic primary. County clerks sought a stay of that ruling, saying that it was too close to Election Day and represented an “undue risk to the administration of this year’s primary elections,” but Quraishi rejected that argument today.
“For the same reasons expressed in its Opinion … the Court concludes that Defendants have not demonstrated that a stay pending appeal is warranted,” Quraishi wrote. “Defendants do not raise any new facts or law suggesting their appeal is likely to succeed on the merits. The Court declines to retread the same ground a second time.”
Quraishi had already naysayed most of the county clerks’ feasibility-related arguments in his original ruling; the clerks had presented evidence in court that they would struggle to design new ballots in time for this year’s primary, but Quraishi said the potential harm to them was far outweighed by the harm the plaintiffs would incur if the line system remained in place.
The denial of a stay means that, at least for now, Quraishi’s order is set to proceed as intended, with county clerks required to shift to an office-block ballot design for Democratic primary ballots.
But most of the state’s county clerks have appealed his ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which could also choose to grant a stay in the case pending appeal. It’s anyone’s guess what the timeline on those appellate proceedings might be.
In the meantime, county clerks will have to begin the process of designing their new ballots. This Thursday is the state’s ballot draw day, when county clerks will determine the order of candidates of both parties on primary ballots, and the ballots themselves will be laid out in the weeks afterwards.