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.