Deadline to redraw municipal wards in N.J. is January 15

About five dozen New Jersey municipalities must redraw ward boundaries by January 15, giving officials just five weeks to draw maps across the state.

Municipal ward commissions, which frequently are comprised of county board of elections members, must begin the process no later than December 16.  Final Reports, including shape files, must be delivered to Secretary of State Tahesha Way within 30 days of the initial meeting.

State law requires the decennial redrawing of municipal wards to reflect the 2020 U.S. Census must.   All wards within a municipality must be +/- 10% of the average population.

Some municipalities, including Newark, Trenton, Bayonne, Orange, Irvington and Belleville, have ward council elections in May 2022.  That means a March 7 filing deadline.

The realignment of ward boundaries is complicated and include challenges of congressional redistricting, where some municipalities are split between House districts.   Newark and Jersey City are split into two legislative districts.

It’s possible for next-door neighbors to have different city councilmembers, legislators and Members of Congress.

In Old Bridge, a 2011 ward redistricting map put residents who live on the even-numbered side of Cymbeline Drive in Ward 4 and those living on the other side of the street in the Ward 2.

The results of a 2021 township council race in Ward 4  is facing a legal challenge after GOP incumbent Mark Razzoli, who lost his seat by 11 votes, alleges that Middlesex County Clerk Nancy Pinkin mailed the wrong ballot to 33 voters who live in Cymbeline Drive.

Election boards frequently rely on recommendations by municipal clerks, but they are not bound to do so.  County clerks serve as tiebreakers if the two parties can’t reach an agreement on ward redistricting.

There’s no easy pattern to determine which municipalities have ward council seats.  Seven of the state’s ten largest municipalities are divided into wards, but so are small cities like Port Republic, which has a population of 1,101 but elects councilmembers from to wards.

In Jersey City, where the recent census showed an 18% jump in population, wards are not even close to being balanced.  Population in Downtown Ward E increased by nearly 60% over the last decade and will ideally need to shed about 20,000 people.

Like congressional and legislative districts, size matters in drawing local ward lines.  The U.S. Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote decision mandated voting maps to be drawn as close to equal in population as possible.

Wards are usually redrawn in the year after the census, but the process started late after the coronavirus pandemic pushed back the release of the 2020 U.S. Census data.