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'Ballot Siberia?': NJ progressives claim 'clear' violation of outlawed design for voting
By
Mike Hayes
Published Apr 21, 2026
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By
Mike Hayes
Published Apr 21, 2026
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Progressive Democrats in South Jersey allege that a mail-in ballot design for the upcoming June primary violates a new state law by giving advantageous placement to a candidate backed by the local Democratic committee.
Last Week, Camden County election officials sent out 32,000 requested vote-by-mail ballots to residents in six of its most populous municipalities, the county clerk’s office said.
An image of a ballot sent to voters in Cherry Hill shows Camden County Board of Commissioners candidate Louis Capelli Jr., the head of the county’s Democratic Party, placed directly below and in line with Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Donald Norcross.
Jonathan Young, another commissioner candidate endorsed by the Camden County Democratic Committee, is listed in the column next to Capelli. Two other candidates, Vonetta Hawkins and Constance Mercedes — both progressive Democrats — are positioned in the next two columns, far to the right of their competitors.
A primary ballot mailed out to voters in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Kate Delany, president of the South Jersey Progressive Democrats, said the ballot’s design mimics what was colloquially known in New Jersey politics as “The Line,” which gave priority to candidates who secured the endorsement of powerful local county committee groups by listing them vertically with prominent party leaders, even though they were running for different offices.
The practice was common in the state until it was outlawed last year.
”It’s clear that it's guiding people to do what they always did with the old ballot, where people just voted right down the line,” Delany told Gothamist. “ We see this as a clear violation of the ballot law.”
Delany said the design pushes the organization’s progressive candidates to the side of the form in “ballot Siberia,” forcing voters to look away from the line that they're “visually guided to go down and over several columns” for their candidates.
The Camden County Clerk’s office designed the ballots. Candidates for the commissioner’s office are listed in the order drawn at random from a wooden box.
“The Clerk has designed a ballot that is fair and equitable to all candidates and follows the statutes set forth by the state of New Jersey,” said Dan Keashen, spokesperson for the Camden County Clerk. He said the ballots were designed to fit the county’s voting machines and to comply with the federal judge’s 2024 decision.
Capelli, the head of the county party who is also listed as a liaison with the clerk’s office, did not return a request for comment.
Camden County Board of Commissioners candidate Louis Capelli, Jr.
Camden County Government
Delany said progressive Democrats were “blindsided” by the ballot, and organizers in the area were denied requests to review a state-mandated printer’s proof of the ballot before its distribution. When they asked the clerk’s office for the proof, she said they were only given a list of names appearing on the ballot.
William Tambussi, an attorney for the Camden County Democratic Committee, declined to comment directly on the concerns raised by Delany.
In defense of Cherry Hill’s ballot design, he shared a similar ballot from Lawnside, another municipality in Camden County. In that version, county committee-backed candidates for municipal offices are not listed directly below Booker, Norcross and Capelli, but are rather “spread across the ballot,” he said.
In 2024, Sen. Andy Kim, then a member of the House of Representatives for South Jersey, filed a federal lawsuit against 19 New Jersey county clerks, including Camden County, challenging the county line ballot system.
His legal challenge argued that the ballot design was unconstitutional and presented data showing that candidates sometimes obtained a double-digit advantage from the ballot’s design.
U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi ruled in favor of Kim and barred the line’s use in that year’s Democratic primary. The ruling was later upheld by the federal appeals court. The following year, the New Jersey legislature passed a ballot design law that effectively outlawed the line structure.
Kim’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Camden County ballots.
Yael Bromberg, attorney for the South Jersey Progressive Democrats, said Cherry Hill’s primary ballot design shows that “The Line” is still a problem and that enforcement of the law cannot be left to individual clerks.
“We really need state engagement here. We need the county clerk to be held accountable for her misconduct and we need the state to effectuate oversight over Camden County election administration because it's really time to end this lawlessness,” she said.
Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics, said Quraishi’s decision laid out multiple new rules for ballot design, which were incorporated into the 2025 state law. Clerks are required to randomly select the names of candidates and group them by the office they are running for, not by the organizations that have endorsed them.
He said it’s unclear whether the mail-in ballot sent to Cherry Hill voters violates the rule.
“This ballot does group together candidates who are running for the same office, so it is an office-block ballot, though it clearly is not an office block ballot that progressives like,” he said. “The question is whether it groups together candidates running for different offices.”
Delany said the South Jersey Progressive Democrats is considering a lawsuit against the county committee over this year’s primary ballot.
“ They refuse to play fair,” she said.
The clash between progressive Democrats and the Camden County Democratic Committee is the latest battle in a civil war between party insiders and those looking to break what they see as a machine-like hold on Democratic political control in the area.
In 2025, a slate of three candidates from the South Jersey Progressive Democrats won seats on Cherry Hill’s county Democratic committee. Cherry Hill elects its county committee members at-large in a winner-take-all contest — which typically would have allowed the three progressives to fill the committee’s remaining 71 seats.
But the Camden County Democratic Committee sued in state court, claiming that the victors had to pull from its list of candidates. Last July, a Superior Court judge sided with the Camden County Democratic Committee. Then on Monday, a three-judge Appeals Court panel unanimously overturned the lower court’s ruling.
Tambussi told Gothamist the Camden County Democratic Committee would file a formal appeal of the decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court before the end of the week.
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election
new jersey
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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