Politics and Elections, Part 1

Bart Cocchiola, December 14, 2022

New Jersey Coalition For Democracy Reform Inc is working to unite New Jersey in support of comprehensive democracy reform. By ‘Democracy Reform’ we mean improving governance in New Jersey by improving our political and election practices to encourage more participation by voters, a greater variety of less extreme candidates, and a system of elections that respects voters by presenting candidates for office in a manner that is fair and impartial.

To understand more about what that means, let’s first look at how government and politics in New Jersey are organized.

The government of New Jersey is very similar in structure to our US federal government; there are three branches (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial), the Legislative branch consists of an Assembly and a Senate, and there is a Constitution. For all of the organizational details related to our state government, read this very informative article from Wikipedia.com.

New Jersey has forty legislative districts, each with two General Assembly Members and one Senator so there are a total of eighty (80) Members of the New Jersey General Assembly and forty (40) Members of the New Jersey Senate.  The forty (40) New Jersey legislative districts are different from the twelve (12) congressional districts by which we elect representatives to the US House of Representatives.  The legislative and congressional districts may be mapped out differently but the political and election systems/practices they rely on are the same.

The two political parties recognized by the state are The Democratic Party and The Republican Party. Voters that choose to not register with a political party are technically known as ‘Unaffiliated’. The process for becoming an additional recognized political party in New Jersey is both vague and onerous which helps to explain why our two dominant parties remain dominant.

Even though New Jersey citizens are divided into forty state legislative districts, the Republican and Democratic parties are organized by county resulting in twenty one county political committees and committee chairpersons per party. Each party also has a state committee and state committee chairperson. Both parties are subordinate to their national organizations, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC).

According to the New Jersey Voter Information Portal, as of the November, 2022 General Election, there were 6,508,146 registered voters in New Jersey. 1,526,446 (23.5%) were Republicans, 2,532,417 (38.9%) were Democrats, and 2,369,262 (36.4%) were unaffiliated with the remainder (about 1%) being affiliated with various 3rd party organizations. Neither political party has a statewide majority of voters and the concentrations of Democrats, Republicans, and Unaffiliated voters vary throughout the state.  Some districts regularly elect Republicans, some reliably elect Democrats and some are not quite as predictable from election to election.

In the United States, each state has independent and full control over how their elections are conducted.  What we do in New Jersey is similar in some ways to other states and not similar at all in other ways. Changes to our election laws are made by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, however, the design of our forty state legislative districts is controlled by our New Jersey State Constitution.  Individual county election offices, each managed by an elected County Clerk (Can be an Independent, Republican, Democrat, etc.), control election day preparations and protocols as well as ballot design.  

Elections in New Jersey consist of Primary and General elections. Primary elections are held in preparation for upcoming general elections allowing the two main political parties to narrow their different candidate groups down to one nominee each for each office sought. General elections may consist of a combination of both federal level and statewide races in addition to county, municipal, and school board elections. All elections, other than school board elections which are non-partisan, will consist of candidates from each of the two recognized parties plus candidates considered Independent or 3rd Party.

Elections in New Jersey don’t require a majority to win, they only require a ‘plurality’ of votes.  Being elected by a ‘majority’ of votes means that more than half of the votes were for the winning candidate.  A ‘plurality’ of votes means that the winning candidate only has more votes than the other candidates, not necessarily a majority.  Keep in mind that a candidate might have become the nominee in a primary where as little as 17% of eligible voters participated only to go on to a general election victory with less than half of the voters supporting him/her. Who benefits from candidates making it into office with so little public support? Whose work will that elected person actually do when a huge majority of voters didn’t vote for that candidate?

New Jersey taxpayers pay for New Jersey’s closed primary election system.  In a closed primary election, only voters registered with one of the two recognized political parties can vote in their party’s elections.  Unaffiliated voters (almost 40% of voters in New Jersey!!!) must join a party the day of the primary in order to vote in that primary, a requirement that shouldn’t be necessary for a person who is paying to help fund those primaries.

End of Part 1!

This would be a great time to take a break, maybe click and read some of the links above, and subscribe to the NJCDR email list.  It’s also a great time to consider if any of the clubs or associations that you belong to would be interested in learning of our efforts to reform New Jersey’s democratic systems. 

If you SUBSCRIBE to this effort to organize NJ voters and if you SHARE this information with new people we will achieve SUCCESS and it’s all run by volunteers!