Back on June 4, the Socialist Party of New Jersey formally asked the state to let voters register as members of the Socialist Party. Currently, New Jersey voters may register into the Democratic and Republican Parties. They can also register into any of the six minor parties that sued the state in the past over voter registration (although not all of those parties still exist in New Jersey or nationally). Those six minor parties are Conservative, Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, and Reform.
New Jersey state officials have known since 2001 that it is unconstitutional to not give voters a free choice of which party to register in, but in all those nine years, neither the legislature, not the state elections office, has passed any bill or any regulation to set forth objective measures of how an unqualified party may obtain the ability to have voters register as members.
New Jersey’s definition of “political party” is so strict, only the Democratic and Republican Parties have been able to comply with it in the last 90 years. To be qualified, a party must poll 10% of all the votes cast for all candidates for member of the lower house of the legislature, for its own candidates for the lower house of the legislature.
Although no one in the elections office has responded to the June 4 letter, the office says a response will be made in the new few days.
