By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE — Voters will have the chance to weigh-in on whether the township’s nonpartisan May municipal elections should be moved to November to coincide with the statewide general election.
The Township Council voted unanimously on June 9 to place a nonbinding referendum on the ballot Nov. 8 that asks voters whether they support the change. It would then be up to the council to make the final decision before the next municipal election, which is scheduled for May 2013.
If voters and subsequently the Township Council approve the change, the mayor and two council members who are scheduled to run for re-election in 2013 would have their terms extended from June 30, 2013 until Dec. 31, 2013. This one-time extension enables them to run in the November 2013 general election.
Proponents of the switch say it will improve voter turnout and save the township about $28,000 in election-related costs. All levels of government share the expense of a November general election, but a municipality must pay the entire cost of a nonpartisan May election because only municipal candidates are running.
Robbinsville Municipal Clerk Michele Seigfried told the Township Council last month that the bills from the most recent nonpartisan municipal election on May 10 were expected to be between $30,000 and $35,000. Voter turnout for last month’s municipal election was 13.7 percent, compared to 42 percent turnout in Robbinsville for the last general election in November 2010.
Under the proposal, the municipal election would continue to be nonpartisan and the mayoral and council candidates’ names would appear on a separate part of the ballot, not under the Republican or Democrat Party lines.
When the plan was first discussed last year some council members worried that having the general and nonpartisan municipal election the same day might open the latter to political interference from party bosses. Others said that party leaders already try to interfere in nonpartisan races, so it made little difference.
The council has said it wants voters to give it direction on the issue because nonpartisan May elections, in which candidates run without Democrat or Republican Party labels, were part of what residents said they wanted when they changed Robbinsville’s form of government in 2005.
Under Robbinsville’s previous Township Committee form of government, municipal candidates were selected in Republican and Democratic primaries in June. The five Township Committee members were elected to staggered three-year terms in November elections, and the committee then chose one of its own members to serve as mayor, a position that was usually rotated every year.
Under the new Township Council form of government, voters directly elect the mayor and the council members to staggered four-year terms in nonpartisan elections held every two years in May.
There are no party primaries in a nonpartisan form of government. Candidates simply have to get a requisite number of signatures on nominating petitions in order to have their names printed on the election ballot.
Six years ago when Robbinsville changed its form of government, state law required that nonpartisan elections be held in May. The law changed in 2010, however, and now towns have the option to move their nonpartisan May elections to November in order to save money.
The new law stipulates that once the change is made, the municipality cannot go back to nonpartisan May elections for at least 10 years.
