A Superior Court Judge ruled today that the Gloucester County Clerk illegally designed the ballot for next month’s general election, but rejected a bid by Republicans to change the ballots because it could cause voter confusion.
Instead, Superior Court Judge Benjamin Telsey ordered the county clerk, James Hogan, to pay the Republicans $26,007 to change printed materials telling voters to vote Column 1.
Hogan, a Democrat, designed office block ballots that are widely viewed to help his own party’s candidates by negating the potential coattails of GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli.
“The ballots as printed here are violative of the statute,” Telsey said. “The court’s finding is that the ballots as constructed are inconsistent with what the legislature wants.
But Telsey prioritized the possibility of voter confusion and rejected reprinting thousands of vote-by-mail ballots, some of which have already been completed and returned to county election officials. A 90-minute hearing convinced Telsey that allowing the VBM ballots to stand and redesigning the in-person ballots was untenable.
The decision is a win for Gloucester County Democrats, who were able to effectively block Republican candidates for legislative and county offices from receiving any help from Ciattarelli.
Ciattarelli carried Gloucester County in 2021 by ten points over Gov. Phil Murphy — a margin that helped Republicans elect a sheriff, flip two county commissioner seats, and seize all three legislative seats in the competitive 3rd District. Democrats clawed back in 2023, winning seats in the Senate and Assembly. In 2024, voters returned the two GOP commissioners, even as Donald Trump carried the county by just three points.
This year, control of county government is on the line: two commissioner seats are up, and if Republicans sweep both, they’ll take charge of Gloucester County for the first time since 1980.
Telsey rejected the coattails idea.
“Intellectually, I hope that’s not what voters are doing — just saying, ‘oh, let’s just go down the A because I don’t have to move my hand further to the right,” he stated.
The ruling reinforces the idea that election laws are based on a “if you’ve seen one judge, you’ve seen one judge” system. On October 23, 2018, a judge in Bergen County ordered new ballots – including VBMs — in North Arlington after the mayor, Joseph Bianchi, died with less than a month to go in his re-election campaign.
