In both New Jersey and Soviet Russia, democracy requires a choice of candidates | Opinion – NJ.com

By Julia Sass Rubin

As a child in Soviet Russia, I distinctly remember my mom voting. Like most Russians, she never missed an election — all adult citizens were expected to vote and failing to do so could have substantial economic and political repercussions.

Although rates of voting participation were high, election outcomes were never in doubt because there was only one candidate available for each position.

I’ve thought about the Soviet system a lot over the last few years as I’ve researched New Jersey politics, particularly our primary elections. As was the case in Soviet Russia, New Jersey residents are encouraged to vote. In fact, laudable recent reforms have made voting easier, with expanded access to vote by mail and early voting.

And, like adults in Soviet Russia, voters in much of New Jersey have few choices when they get to the polls, particularly in primary elections. In the 2021 primaries, for example, I’ve determined that only 10% of the 240 legislative positions on the ballot were contested. Since most of the state is dominated by one of the two major political parties, voters have few real choices in the general election as well.

New Jersey’s lack of primary candidates stands in sharp contrast to our neighbors. In last year’s primary, Pittsburgh Democrats chose from four candidates for mayor, two for sheriff, and 39 for nine judgeships, while New York City Democrats selected from 13 mayoral wannabes.

The lack of primary candidates is not the result of voter or candidate apathy. Rather, as with Soviet Russia, it reflects decisions made by political parties to protect their ability to control who governs. In 19 of New Jersey’s 21 counties, the parties do so through a unique ballot design known as the county line, which places all the party-endorsed candidates on the ballot in a vertical or horizontal line, headed by the candidate for the highest office.

My analysis of the 2020 New Jersey primary election found that candidates of both parties performed an average of 35 percentage points better when they were on the county line than when they were not – a nearly insurmountable margin. I also found that county line ballots confused voters, leading to substantial overvotes and undervotes. Perhaps that is why New Jersey is the only state in the country that uses such primary ballots.

Candidates are granted the right to appear on the county line by the political party chairs of each county. Non-endorsed candidates generally drop out, recognizing that winning without the county line is largely a Sisyphean task.

New Jersey’s unique primary ballot design and endorsement process give enormous power to political party leaders. It also contributes to a political culture of inside dealing and nepotism, with voters, in most cases, irrelevant to deciding who wins primary elections.

This is well illustrated by the recent announcement that Sen. Robert Menendez’s son, Robert Menendez, Junior, is running for his father’s old congressional seat. Within days of his candidacy becoming public, the younger Menendez gained the endorsement of the Democratic county party chairs of Hudson and Union counties, which make up the newly-drawn 8th Congressional District. Their endorsements ensure Menendez the county line on all Hudson and Union primary ballots, which virtually guarantees him the primary win. Since the 8th Congressional district is overwhelmingly Democratic, winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general election.

Because New Jersey’s political parties are private organizations, not subject to Open Public Record requests or other transparency measures, the Hudson and Union endorsements all took place behind closed doors, outside the view of voters or the press. Secrecy and unchecked power are a potent combination.

New Jersey laws also do not preclude political party chairs from serving in elected public office, which further enhances the power given to them by the county line. In the case of the 8th Congressional District, the chair of the Union County Democratic Party is also the president of the New Jersey State Senate, while the chair of the Hudson County Democratic party serves on the Jersey City Council (and is the daughter of the county’s powerful executive).

As the New Jersey and Soviet Russia examples highlight, voting is a necessary but not sufficient part of democratic governance. For democracy to function properly, voters also must have a choice of candidates, and elected officials must be accountable to the voters. Because of the county line primary ballot, neither of those conditions are currently in place in much of our state.

Julia Sass Rubin is an associate professor and the public policy program director at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She is also an associate visiting professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a board member of the Good Government Coalition of NJ.

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