New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP), a statewide nonpartisan nonprofit think tank focused on economic, social and racial justice, has long advocated for fair ballots in the state, including multiple reports on the harmful influence of the “county line” on primary election choices.
I broadly ask you to build a ballot that applies best practices and does not allow for any visual advantage, either in terms of order, position, highlighting, font, or other visual cues.
1. Any ballot design process must include as much of the public as possible.
When a committee focused on ballot design sets last-minute meeting times at difficult times for members of the public to attend, the committee is leaving out members of the public, particularly lower-information voters, whose understanding of the ballot is most important for the committee to hear. It is impossible to design effective ballots without clear public feedback on what confusion and concerns they have about ballot design.
NJPP urges more notice, more convenient meeting times, and more public feedback, not less.
2. New Jersey should move towards clean, office-block ballots with minimal visual cues that give an advantage to any candidate over any other.
New Jersey should follow the principles of the opinion in the Hanlon case, as well as best practices of national ballot design experts. The vast majority of states use an office-block design with minimal visual cues to indicate endorsement or incumbency.
Allowing any highlighting, asterisks, endorsements, placement, bracketing, incumbency markings, or other visual cues that signal that one candidate is special over any other creates a risk of unfair balloting. Randomized electronic draws can prevent placement-order advantages.
3. There is more to good ballot design than office-block balloting; this committee should ensure the state’s ballot reflects other best practices.
If New Jersey means to revamp its ballot design to provide for fairness and reduce confusion among voters, it should adhere to ballot design best practices advanced by civic engagement experts. As an example, New Jersey counties frequently use all-caps to indicate candidate names and as emphasis throughout the instructions, even though they make word shapes harder to recognize and lead to lower comprehension. Similarly, many New Jersey ballots use centered type, even though left-justified type is more legible. Instructions are often nonstandard and do not include visual cues.
Ballot design should also reflect the diverse array of voters in New Jersey, including voters who are blind, deaf or hard of hearing, or otherwise have a disability; voters with limited English proficiency; voters with low literacy levels; voters who may require assistance in filling out their ballots; etc. User testing should include all of these voter groups.
If the concern of the committee is to reduce confusion by voters, any attempt to redesign New Jersey’s ballots must incorporate these best practices, rather than exclusively focus on the questions of slogans, bracketing, and other indicators that potentially give advantages to one candidate.
