Ballot rotation bill draws scrutiny over party role, election logistics

A bill designed to dilute the electoral advantage of drawing the coveted first spot on New Jersey primary ballots received a hearing Tuesday, as lawmakers weighed a proposal to rotate candidates’ names while election officials and voting-rights advocates raised concerns about its implementation.

The Assembly State and Local Government Committee discussed A5283, a bill that would allow county and municipal clerks to rotate the order in which candidates’ names appear on primary election ballots, provided local party organizations and election officials mutually agree to adopt the practice.

Introduced by Assemblyman Michael Venezia (D-Bloomfield), the legislation would permit county and municipal clerks to implement ballot rotation after the public drawing for ballot position. Under the proposal, each candidate would appear in every ballot position before approximately the same number of voters, spreading the advantage of favorable ballot placement across the field. Rotation would occur only if both county and municipal party organizations agree to the change.

The bill comes two years after the abolition of New Jersey’s county line system, which forced the state to adopt an office-block ballot design in which candidates are grouped by office and a public drawing determines ballot position. The first two primary elections conducted under the new system have demonstrated that appearing first on the ballot can provide a significant political advantage.

The 2026 Republican U.S. Senate primary offers an example of the electoral benefits of top-ballot placement. In a race where no candidate possessed a significant fundraising advantage or the resources to communicate broadly with voters, ballot position appeared to take on outsized importance.

Former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy, who ultimately won the nomination, likely benefited from drawing first-ballot positions across much of the state, helping propel him above the rest of the field. A5283’s implementation of rotating candidate names would distribute the advantages of prime ballot placement among multiple candidates rather than allowing them to accrue solely to the winners of the ballot drawing.

Critics, however, have raised concerns about the bill’s implementation. Some object that ballot rotation could occur only at the request of political parties and only after the public drawing has taken place, arguing that it could be used by parties to level the playing field if a candidate not backed by a particular county organization receives the top ballot position. They contend that the bill introduces party discretion into what is intended to be a neutral election administration process.

Antoinette Miles, state director of the New Jersey Working Families Party, took issue with that aspect of the legislation.

“If the goal is to have a fair election outcome, then why would we once again take a good-governance reform meant to be uniformly applied statewide and instead hand it over to the control and discretion of political parties?” Miles said.

Heather Richner, associate counsel for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, argued that the policy should be mandatory rather than left to municipal and county leaders’ discretion.

“We do not think this should be optional,” Richner said.

Others who testified expressed greater concern about the logistics of administering the policy.

Linda Hughes, the Republican administrator for the Burlington County Board of Elections, raised concerns about implementation costs, noting that Burlington County spent $55,000 on 17,000 sample ballots and that, under a rotation system, those costs could increase dramatically.

The number of actual ballots, Hughes said, “could easily go into the hundreds of thousands, even surpassing actual voter turnout in a given election.”

Somerset County Clerk Steve Peter, a Democrat, testified before the committee and did not take a position on the bill itself, but urged lawmakers to work closely with county clerks to ensure any changes comply with existing election laws.

“Right now, the sample ballot that gets sent out to all voters is supposed to be a facsimile, as close as possible, to the machine ballot. Now, if we have rotation, that’s not going to be possible, so we’re going to have to have some sort of district-level sample ballot,” Peter said.

Peter noted that in a county such as Somerset, ballot rotation could result in more than 500 different ballot styles.

He also raised concerns about the already compressed timeline county clerks face between the close of candidate filing and ballot production.

“Our biggest concern as clerks is that we’re already on a very tight timeline. From the time petitions are submitted, the state verifies the state-level and federal candidates, the clerk’s office verifies the county-level candidates, we receive the municipal filings, the challenge period takes place, and then we conduct the ballot position drawing,” stated Peter. “Literally the next day, we’re supposed to send everything to the printer.”

The committee did not vote on the bill today; it was billed as a discussion only. Venezia, the sponsor, was not in attendance.