Gary Stein is an independent candidate for the New Jersey legislature this year, running in the 2nd district in the Atlantic City area. The Press, the daily newspaper for Atlantic City, has this article about New Jersey general election ballot format. New Jersey is the only state that still uses party column ballots and will never provide a party column for parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties. As the story says, New Jersey defines “party” to be a group that polled at least 10% for all the votes cast for Assembly (lower house of the state legislature), and ever since that law has existed, only the Democratic and Republican Parties have met that definition. The law has existed since 1920.

New Jersey county elections officials are free to design their own ballots, and three counties have fair ballots that don’t use party columns at all. They are Monmouth, Salem, and Sussex Counties. All other counties crowd all the nominees of unqualified parties, and all the independent candidates, into a column headed “Nomination by Petition.” Probably a large proportion of voters never even look at the names in that column, which is always toward the right-hand part of the ballot. Candidate ballot labels are next to the candidates’ names in tiny print.

Stein is suing to overturn that ballot format. The case is Stein v McGettigan, Atlantic Superior Court, ATL L4907-13. It was filed July 15 and a hearing date will probably be set soon.