TRENTON — The times have changed, but a key part of the state’s election law is still stuck in the past, according to a coalition of students and advocacy groups that filed a challenge to New Jersey’s voter-registration law today. Instead of requiring 21 days to process a voter registration, the state should get with the times and allow...
Political campaign signs are visible throughout New Jersey on Election Day in November 2009. TRENTON — The times have changed, but a key part of the state’s election law is still stuck in the past, according to a coalition of students and advocacy groups that filed a challenge to New Jersey’s voter-registration law today.
Instead of requiring 21 days to process a voter registration, the state should get with the times and allow people to sign up on Election Day, the plaintiffs argued. Thousands of residents are locked out of the voting booth every year because they don’t file their paperwork on time, they said, and the law is especially cumbersome for highly mobile people like college students.
"People who are moving have a lot of other things on their mind," said Frank Askin, director of the Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic, who is lead counsel for the plaintiffs. "There are nine states that have Election Day registration. Those states have the highest voter turnout in the country."
In Minnesota, for example, nearly 78 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in the 2008 presidential election — the highest rate in the nation. New Jersey came in 19th that year, Askin said. On average, states that allow same-day registration get 8 percent more turnout, he added.
If the plaintiffs are successful, New Jersey would become the first state to implement Election Day registration through the courts. The others have all made the change through legislation.
Plaintiffs include the Rutgers University student government, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey. They filed suit in Superior Court in Middlesex County because several students at Rutgers’ New Brunswick campus couldn’t register on time or had their votes thrown out in recent elections.
"People always talk about how young people are apathetic, but I think in a lot of ways they’re alienated," said Matthew Cordeiro, vice president of the Rutgers student government. "They have to register four or five more times than the average person."
He added, "We have cell phones that pinpoint your location from thousands of miles away — I don’t know why we can’t figure out same-day voter registration."
A similar lawsuit in Connecticut was recently dismissed by a judge who found that the electronic database for voter registrations was not ready to handle same-day registrations. New Jersey has no such problem, Askin said, but its database capability will most likely be one of the "big questions" in what he expects to be a tough legal fight.
"The political bosses don’t like dealing with wild cards," he said. "They like dealing with stable, known constituencies."
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment. The Middlesex County Board of Elections, which is named as a defendant, also declined to comment because it had not been served yet.
Beyond the inconvenience, the groups also have general concerns about voting by provisional ballot. Around 25 percent of those ballots cast in 2008 ended up being disqualified, they said.
"Two of the main culprits in denying people their right to vote — citizens not receiving provisional ballots or not having those ballots counted — could be problems of the past," said Ed Barocas, legal director for ACLU-NJ.