Judge rejects push by clerks to block his order barring use of county-line ballots

The judge overseeing a constitutional challenge to New Jersey’s county-line ballot design on Monday denied a request by a group of county clerks that had asked him to halt his Friday decision forbidding them from using the disputed ballots.

U.S. District Judge Zahid N. Quraishi said in a brief order that the clerks had not raised any new arguments in their request for a stay or cited any law that suggests their appeal of his Friday decision is likely to succeed.

“The Court declines to retread the same ground a second time,” Quraishi said.

All eyes now move to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The clerks have asked the federal appeals court to weigh in on Quraishi’s Friday order, which they say is unfeasible. They need more time to move to a different kind of ballot layout, and making the change now in advance of June’s primaries would result in “electoral chaos,” they have said.

Rep. Andy Kim and two congressional candidates sued the group of clerks in February, arguing that the county-line system — which allows candidates backed by party leaders to group themselves on the ballot — is unconstitutional. Quraishi on Friday issued a preliminary injunction that bars the clerks from using the county-line ballots for June’s Democratic primaries and orders them to use office-block ballots, which group candidates by office sought.

In a legal filing earlier Monday, Kim’s attorneys argued that there was ample evidence that clerks already have the capability to print mail ballots and prepare voting machines with an office-block design — and they’ve done it before in prior elections.

“Experienced voting technology experts also made clear that for a clerk to transition from a county-line primary ballot to an office-block display is a relatively easy task, taking a few hours, or a day at most, and may actually be easier to program and check in its totality,” Kim’s attorneys wrote. “There is absolutely no credible evidence of an ‘undue risk to the administration of this year’s primary elections.’”

Kim, a Democrat, is seeking his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate seat now held by indicted Sen. Bob Menendez against two other candidates, labor leader Patricia Campos-Medina and activist Larry Hamm.

Quraishi’s order shook politics in New Jersey, which stands alone nationally in its county-line ballot design. Critics have long said the county line grants outsized power to local party leaders and disenfranchises voters.

Attorneys for the clerks say they are facing a key deadline of April 5, when they must prepare printer’s proofs of the ballots.

“Our clients have a significant concern about their ability to comply with the Court’s order issued today,” attorney Rajiv D. Parikh wrote Friday. “This Court’s Order could result in electoral chaos, however unintended, if not stayed pending appeal.”

Attorneys for Kim told Quarishi Monday that April 5 is a “soft” deadline because state courts “regularly relax that deadline when necessary to adjudicate claims of improper ballot design or to otherwise protect candidates’ rights.”

The April 20 deadline for mailing ballots to military and overseas voters is “a much firmer” deadline, and “even that is not completely fixed,” Kim’s attorneys wrote. County clerks have until May 22 to prepare voting machines, they added.

An earlier version of this story should have said Kim filed his lawsuit against the clerks in February.