New Jersey

The Garden State is lucky to have voting champion Gov. Phil Murphy in office. In 2018, New Jersey was able to establish both automatic voter registration (A2014) and vote-by-mail (S647). Gov. Murphy has been calling for additional strong voting rights legislation in 2019. Gov. Murphy is pushing for a bill that allows online voter registration, early voting, same day voter registration, and restores the right to vote to individuals on parole and probation. These measures would make New Jersey one of the leading states for voting rights.

So far in 2019, New Jersey has passed legislation (S756) that updates notice of elections requirements to include information for voters to obtain polling locations – this should help increase poll accessibility. Several other voting rights bills have been introduced so far in 2019, including expanding vote-by-mail (A5195), requiring vote-by-mail ballots to include prepaid return postage (A4963S3333), requiring paid leave for employees to vote on Election Day in certain circumstances (S3385), and requiring that ballot be available in English and Spanish (A5471). 

With New Jersey Democrats at the helm, we are optimistic that New Jersey will continue to be a leader in voting rights.