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Friday
May 25th

N.J. voter turnout hits an all-time low

NJStateSealBY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

New Jersey’s registered voters set a state record this past Tuesday, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

Of the 5.2 million registered voters in New Jersey, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 1.4 million came out to vote, a total of about 26 percent.

Essex County led, or trailed the list, with only 18 percent of its registered voters voting, according to election records. Hudson County had 19 percent voter participation, and 225 came out in Passaic County. Only 34 percent of registered voters came out in Atlantic County, where the ballot question on sports betting would have the most impact.

Ingrid Reed, former policy analyst at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, told the Asbury Park Press, “There needs to be more of a government involvement in publicizing Election Day, making it easier to find out who the candidates are. We don’t treat elections like something we want people to know about.”

Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute believes there is a larger turnout of eligible voters when the state has aggressive voter registration campaigns. He said, "In 1996, registration rates jumped in 1996 because of Motor Voter, which allowed people to register at the same time they renewed their driver’s licenses or registrations.”

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said the state’s legislative map favored incumbents. “With the map they have, they won,” Christie said, according to the Wall Street Journal. The state’s new legislative map was passed in April, and it surpassed previous political boundaries for preserving incumbents.

The previous low voter total in New Jersey for a general election came in 1999, when 31 percent of registered voters voted.

 
Comments (5)
5 Monday, 14 November 2011 16:31
Jeremiah Was An Optimist
Rich people don't vote unless there is a threat to their ivory tower communities because they feel the state is overtaxed on the property side. Poor people don't vote because they are (a) ignorant or (b) illegal or (c) completely without hope of affecting the general will of the people through elections. Public servants that owe their jobs to current municipal and state administrators and legislators always vote early and often because they must to keep their jobs. Business folks don't vote much, and rarely get involved politically with municipal elections because it only reveals new cash sources to steal to those they would otherwise support. If a general election is going on for Senators or higher in DC, some of these people will vote in local elections by accident. Local municipalities have a vested interest in low turnout or they would have to give up their double and triple dipping and nepotistic appointments.

The Soprano State has perfected the art of Criminocracy. Vote you lose, speak you lose, boycott you lose, drive to work you lose, educate your kid you lose, hire someone in your business you lose, open a business you lose, sell your house you lose, buy a house you lose, fix your property you lose, let your property go to seed you lose, work for the government you lose, drink the water you lose, flush the water closet you lose, wash your clothes you lose, inspect your car you lose, pay car insurance you lose. And you are expected to vote for unopposed candidates for the local machine that have personal relationships with the party politicians as qualifications in an election run by relatives of the politicians where there is absolutely no secret ballot because the size of the towns is too small to protect anyone's identity and anyone that gets on the ballot is attacked as they would be in the third world for daring to voice even the smallest question at public expenditure or special dealing????

All municipal governments in the state should be fired tomorrow morning and all their policies, pending contracts, letters of intent, nominees for patronage appointments cancelled without exception. All counties should be split in half based on geographic boundaries tempered by sane adjustments for relative population. All legislators should be recalled. All municipal services should be revised for the new county incorporations. All school districts merged into the new county districts. All zoning boards should be fired and forced to run for re-election. Same with all school boards. All double and triple dipping persons should be forced to chose only one position (with or without remuneration) and give up the others immediately. All contracts with services (power, water, sewer, gas, sanitation, security, transit) should be sunset and face renegotiation with the new county governors and boards within one calendar year. Boards of elections for the State and all county clerks should be removed and replaced with Trenton bi-partisan commission until the incredible corruption at the current county level can be excised. All property valuations, tax levels should be frozen for one year, then averaged by the new county divisions and clear numbers for frontage, total land area, size, use, age and condition of structures in a simple format should be installed. Valuations must be changed to more closely reflect market prices, but rates changed to avoid hardship across the board. A one time 3 year abatement for property owners of their own single family or 2 family dwelling to preserve current rates should be installed for seniors and unemployed householders. Eminent domain machinations by local boards and municipalities still in process should suffer injunction and special legislative review. It's time that New Jersey grew up and faced the fact that it is not a bunch of small towns, and can't fund necessary services or avoid racist "separate and unequal" administration and one-party machine corruption with its current balkanized inanity.

NJ voters have voted with their feet: their state and local governments, their tax statues and rates and the very constitution of the State are worse than worthless: they are egregious, undemocratic obstructions to the freedoms and economic and social welfare of the citizens. And right wing defenders of the status quo cry that larger government is wasteful. And democratic machine defenders of the status quo cry that they have just won a mandate.

I think we should just do away with the expense of any elections and let the Sopranos continue to do what they have been doing here since Frank Hague milked the Pulaski for all it was worth in the thirties. We can always go to the one institution that NJ leads the nation with per capita: the neighborhood gin mill for consolation.

Shame on us all.
4 Friday, 11 November 2011 10:20
Patrick Murray
Bob - You really misinterpreted - and missed the point of - a quote taken from a different context. I don't believe that at all. In fact, quite the opposite. Motor Voter and the 2008 registration drives increased voter registration - but not turnout. But, as I have stated in other places, those new registrants are not any more likely to actually show up on election day simply because you got their names on the rolls. Low turnout is driven by a lack of competitive elections and the fact we have too many elections (odd-year, school board, municipal, etc.).
3 Friday, 11 November 2011 09:47
DianeCee
I think most New Jerseyans have had their fill of the special interest representatives who push poverty better than a drug dealer pushes crack. Voting in NJ has little meaning and that is why the state is leaking tax payers. The very fact that Loretta Weinberg, a Californian turned New Yorker to injecting her communist self into NJs government (where she steals tax payer dollars to reimburse herself from the loss she suffered via Madoff) is enough to scare away any and all tax payers. With all due respect to our fabulous governor, I think people in NJ want to work to afford their own families rather than the welfare status that NJs "progressive" politicians forced upon us. It amazes the working people how politicians in NJ are rarely from NJ and, when dried up, they walk away filthy rich. There is no allegiance to NJ in NJs "gubmint".
2 Friday, 11 November 2011 07:06
Politicalpony
Turn out is low because the citizens understand that no matter how they vote, they are incapable of changing the faces that RULE. Voting in this state is a waist of time for the people. There is no One Person One Vote when the reapportionment map is fixed that so no one can ever be VOTED OUT! The process begins, although in the state constitution, with what would appear to be a fixed political committee in charge of creating the district map. Can you say " The Fox guarding the Hen House?" The process is nothing more than a scam that defies logic. How do you allow the people that are in or running for office have so much control of a process that determines whether or not they keep their job or not. The people should demand a Constitutional Map and not one drawn up by an Oligarchy of Selfish Greedy Tyrants. Have you ever first hand witnessed the arrogants of many of the people that either hold office in Trenton or the people appointed to positions of power? I witnessed the Vote of the Map and these people are so arrogant that they lie in public with a smiling face. They have no fear of their wrong doings just because of this process alone. They know no matter what they do or say, they can never be unelected. The elections in this state have no meaning or consequences whatsoever to these people.
1 Friday, 11 November 2011 00:18
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