The New Jersey Senate is in recess, but it returns on Tuesday, January 14. It is possible the bill making ballot access more restrictive will get a vote that day. The Green, Libertarian, and Moderate Parties are working to defeat the bill, which has already passed the Senate policy committee, and the Assembly. The identical bills are SB 3994, and AB 5117.

Although the petition requirements would not be unconstitutionally severe if the bills pass, the New Jersey definition of a qualified party might be. It’s already difficult enough to imagine a minor party polling 10% of the entire Assembly vote for its Assembly nominees, and if a group tried, logically it should run 80 candidates. But the task of recruiting and petitioning for 80 candidates would be even more severe if each candidate, or pair of candidates, needs 250 signatures instead of 100, as the bills would establish.

The minor parties also have some leverage because they are in a position to sue over New Jersey’s discriminatory ballot format, in which (in most counties) the Republican Party and the Democratic Party each get a party column of their own, but every other candidate is squeezed into a column headed by “Nomination by Petition”. That prevents some voters from even noticing the names of the minor party candidates. This year a federal court enjoined that type of ballot format for primary election ballots, and the legislature is working to reform primary ballot format. But no bill has been introduced to reform ballot format for the general election.

Bills to increase the number of signatures for independent candidates, and the nominees of unqualified parties, are moving through the New Jersey legislature. The sponsors of these bills, S3994 and A5117, claim that New Jersey general election ballots are crowded. These claims are not true.

The most recent New Jersey gubernatorial election was in 2021. There were only five candidates for Governor on that ballot.

The most recent legislative elections were in 2023. For the 40 seats in the State Senate, there were only 86 candidates, for an average of only 2.15 candidates per seat. For the 80 seats in the Assembly, there were only 160 candidates, for an average of 2 candidates per seat. There was no legislative race with more than three candidates per seat. A few of the legislative races had only one candidate on the ballot.

The most recent presidential and congressional elections were in 2024. For president, there were nine candidates on the New Jersey ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court had said in Williams v Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968), that eight candidates are not so many as to cause any problem. This appears in Justice Harlan’s concurrence on page 47. Other states that had as many or more presidential candidates on the ballot in 2024 were Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Washington.

For the U.S. Senate race in New Jersey in 2024, there were only six candidates. For U.S. House races, there were only 54 candidates for the twelve seats, for an average of 4.5 candidates per district. No district had more than six candidates on the ballot.

The national popular vote for U.S. House in 2024 shows that Republicans polled 3,692,650 more votes than Democrats did. The Republican margin over the Democrats is the largest since 2014. Ironically the Republicans lost one seat in the U.S. House. The tally is 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats.

The presidential margin between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was 2,284,338. Therefore, the Republicans enjoyed a greater margin over Democrats for the House than they did for the presidency.

Ballot Access News does not merge the Working Families Party votes that are cast for Democrats for U.S. House into the Democratic total. Similarly, it does not merge the Conservative Party votes cast for Republicans for U.S. House into the Republican total. There are other news sources that take a different approach, so their totals vary somewhat from the BAN figures.

Republicans for the U.S. House got a slight majority of the vote, 50.29%. The “other” vote for U.S. House (independents, minro parties) was 1.91%.