Two Hudson County legislators – Annette Chapparo of Hoboken and Nicholas Chiaravalloti of Bayonne – have joined Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-Monmouth Junction) in his quest to give New Jerseyans a whole new way of casting ballots.

First, Zwicker says, we would need to replace every voting machine in the state. And it looks like that may already be happening.

A new type of voting machine is being used Tuesday in a pilot program in Guttenberg. It won’t allow ranked voting now, but since it is all electronic, its coding could be changed to make that happen.

When I chaired the State Government Committee in the Legislature years ago, a small but loud group of protesters would follow me from room to room demanding new voting machines. They didn’t all agree on what kind of machines, but most wanted machines with paper trails proving how people voted. We saw prototypes of some of the suggested machines but weren’t persuaded they’d be any improvement over the current ones. Most counties had recently switched from lever machines to touch screens and were satisfied they were state-of-the-art.

Although there were allegations of fraud, there was very little evidence of it, and there was no assurance another kind of machine would prevent tampering and ensure accurate counts. But that was a decade ago and today’s machines are very different from the prototypes we saw then.

The one in Guttenberg is on display for a week so voters can test it and poll workers try it out. It’s already in use in Union County and is being considered by Hudson County. It has a paper trail of sorts but doesn’t give voters a receipt. Having a trail made of actual paper presented too many opportunities for vote-selling and presented privacy problems, legislators believed.

Instead, the machine will display a printed version of each person’s selections and allow the voter to approve it or change it. The paper versions will be stored and available at any time an audit is needed to verify tallies. Since machines aren’t connected to the internet, they can’t be hacked.

The user-friendly machine in Guttenberg, made by Election Software & Systems, looks like a big iPad and allows voters to select English or another language and can offer prompts to ensure voters don’t accidentally skip a category or a public question. It also permits election officials to select larger or smaller fonts to make room for long lists of candidates or wordy public questions.

Guttenberg voters will also have the opportunity to informally express their opinions about the new voting machines to town and county officials who’ll be on hand on Election Day.

But they’ll still be voting only for their favorite candidates.

If Zwicker’s legislation passes, they’ll be able to rank every candidate from No. 1 downward.

Spelled out in A5205, Zwicker wants New Jersey to have ranked voting for the offices of governor, members of the Legislature, members of Congress, party primaries, and electors for the offices of president and vice president.

The method allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference and have ballots counted in rounds, with votes or fractions of votes distributed to candidates according to those preferences. Zwicker believes the method is now being used by some municipalities in Maine and California and notes that New York voters will vote next week on a referendum about offering ranked voting in that state.

It’s a little complicated to explain, but, if you think back, you probably used some version of it in grade school when you chose a class president or student council rep.

Let’s say there are 10 candidates, like in the current Dem primary, and you like some better than others. This ballot would allow you to rank them, 1 to 10, or just to rank the top five or six of your favorites, leaving out the others. You’d mark your ballot that way, submit it, and see a paper copy.

When polls close, the machines would instantly calculate all the No. Ones, and if those totaled more than 50 percent, that person would be named the winner. Of course, with many candidates, it’s unlikely anyone would win in the first round so the person ranked lowest by most voters would drop out of contention and a new calculation would begin. Rounds would continue until someone reached the 50 percent-plus-one-vote requirement.

Zwicker, a physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, acknowledges voters would need to be educated on the new system and trust the technology that made the calculations.

Won’t happen any time soon, but it’s something to think about while you await the latest election results.

A former assemblywoman from Jersey City, Joan Quigley is the president and CEO of North Hudson Community Action Corp.

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