PACKET EDITORIAL, May 9
By: Packet Editorial
Here it is, the second Tuesday in May, and that means yet another Election Day in New Jersey.
Today’s plebiscite comes on the heels of the third Tuesday in April, when a relative handful of citizens went to the polls to vote on their school budgets and choose their local school board members.
That election came on the heels of the third Saturday in February, when even fewer citizens bothered to vote on their fire district budgets and select their local fire commissioners.
And today’s balloting comes just a month before the first Tuesday in June, when registered Democrats and Republicans will cast their ballots in primary elections to choose their parties’ candidates for various local, county and federal offices.
The primaries will be followed five months later, on the first Tuesday in November, by the general election.
In between, numerous school districts around the state have held special elections seeking voter permission to spend money on construction and renovation projects. Under state law, those referendums may be held on five specific dates each year only one of which, in April, coincides with any other scheduled election.
It’s little wonder that voter turnout in New Jersey continues to plummet with each passing election and that participation is particularly dismal in school board, fire commission and school referendum balloting. And we’d be surprised if today’s contests in Newark, Trenton and dozens of other cities, towns and townships around the state municipalities that hold their elections in May because they chose to adopt a nonpartisan form of government under New Jersey’s Optional Municipal Charter Law didn’t continue this trend.
Although there are contested races for mayor and council seats in both Newark and Trenton, and although Newark mayoral candidate Cory Booker has reportedly amassed a campaign bankroll in the neighborhood of $4 million (a good deal of which is likely being spread around today on a get-out-the-vote effort), nobody expects large numbers of Newarkers or Trentonians to show up at the polls. Voter apathy has been eating away at the turnout in big-city elections for several decades, and residents of New Jersey’s cities may be even less inclined to buck this trend than their counterparts across the country living, as they do, in a state where elections seem to crop up as often as corn and tomatoes.
There may have been a time back in the days when New Jersey’s economy was a lot more dependent on corn and tomatoes that voting every few weeks was a pleasant, community-building activity. Folks would gather at the polling place to exchange pleasantries, catch up on the latest gossip and do their civic duty. They cast paper ballots, administered and counted by volunteers, and there was little, if any, cost associated with this exercise.
Today’s elections are, of necessity, more elaborate and expensive affairs. Whether it’s an uncontested school board race or a presidential election, the process requires sophisticated, costly electronic voting machines, operated not by volunteers but by paid poll workers. Before the election, printing up and mailing out sample ballots costs money. On Election Day, operating the courts for a full day of adjudicating complaints and challenges costs money. After the polls have closed, gathering all the votes from all the machines and sending them along to the county costs money. At the county court house, validating the numbers, accounting for the absentee and provisional ballots and sending everything on to the state costs money. For months before and after every election, gathering and maintaining campaign contribution and expenditure reports costs money.
Democracy doesn’t come cheap. We understand that. But democracy doesn’t have to be nearly as expensive as it is in New Jersey. On this, the occasion of the third election in the last 14 weeks with a fourth one coming up in less than a month, we might contemplate making Election Day a less frequent and, perhaps as a consequence, more participatory occasion.

