Last week the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ), the Rutgers School of Law-Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinic, and the New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center, filed a lawsuit arguing for Election Day registration in the state.
Project Vote board member Frank Askin, director of the Newark Constutional Law Clinic at the Rutgers School of Law, points out that other states have implemented Election-Day registration to great success. “The facts show that states that allow election-day registration have substantially higher voter participation, and they also show that election-day registration has functioned smoothly there,” said Askin, in a press release on the case.
The suit was filed on behalf of Rutgers University students, Middlesex County residents, the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey, and New Jersey Citizen Action. It argues that New Jersey’s current law, which requires registrations to be submitted 21 days in advance of each election, severely burdens the right to vote of thousand of New Jersey residents, and prevents otherwise eligible citizens from casting ballots and having their ballots counted. The suit asks the court to declare the 21-day advance voting requirement unconstitutional, and to task the defendants with creating a plan for Election-Day registration.
“An overwhelming number of the problems the ACLU-NJ sees year after year monitoring polls and helping voters could be solved in one fell swoop by instituting Election Day registration,” said ACLU-NJ Legal Director Ed Barocas. “Two of the main culprits in denying people their right to vote — citizens not receiving provisional ballots or not having those ballots counted — would be problems of the past.”
Read a press release on the lawsuit here.