Assembly likely to propose watered-down ballot design bill, dropping rotation of candidates

The rotating and randomization of candidate names on the June primary election ballot is expected to be removed from a ballot design bill after lawmakers from both parties complained that the concept of non-identical ballots was too complicated and could lead to voter confusion, the New Jersey Globe has learned.

That could lead to a final version of a bill crafted by the Assembly Select Committee on Ballot Design to be simpler than originally intended, codifying office block primary ballots ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi last year, and allowing running mates for the same office to appear to together in the primary election.

The era of candidates being placed in a sort of “Ballot Siberia” where voters would find them hard to find would be over.

But it appears that legislative leaders are dropping a plan to place actual {brackets} around the names of candidates filing joint petitions for the same office and will no longer offer the option of current officeholders to identify themselves as incumbents on the primary ballot.

Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald’s proposal to increase the number of signatures required to get on the primary election ballot is still on the table.

Progressive activists had strongly pushed for the randomization and rotation system, which would allow each candidate to share the top spot on the primary ballot an equal number of times rather than accept the fate of a ballot draw.

The original proposal used an algorithm to rotate the order in which names appear on the ballot.  Simply put, not every ballot within a political subdivision would be identical, and all candidates would appear an equal number of times in the first position, based on voting districts.

“The rotated ballots may be presented to the voters by assigning the ballot versions per election district, or by randomly presenting such ballots to each voter when voting by mail, voting during the early voting period, or voting in person on election day,” the initial draft bill stated.

It wasn’t a one-size-fits-all statute: the plan was for county clerks to decide about randomizing and rotating their ballots, with the unanimous consent of the Board of Elections members from a political party to implement the idea.  Some were concerned about the cost of printing so many variations of the ballot.

Some political insiders viewed this as overly complex, and uncertain why the Assembly was moving quickly to force a new plan that few understood.

“Some lady in Montclair sends a tweet, and everybody loses their shit,” said a prominent Democratic strategist.  “I don’t get it.”