Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-Somerset) has introduced a bill, NJ A5205, that would establish the new voting system for all state-level and federal elections in New Jersey, from state Assembly to president. | Getty Images Lawmaker introduces bill to establish ranked-choice voting in New Jersey

The push for ranked-choice voting, an idea that’s growing across the country, has reached New Jersey.

Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-Somerset) has introduced a bill, NJ A5205, that would establish the new voting system for all state-level and federal elections in New Jersey, from state Assembly to president.


If adopted, ranked-choice voting would be a radical departure from New Jersey’s current electoral system, in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins on the first ballot, and represent a potential challenge to the state’s notorious boss-driven political culture.

“There have been plenty of headlines around this idea of giving more power to the people in a crowded field to expand beyond just a single winner and letting their voice be heard,” Zwicker said in a phone interview. “They know there’s a candidate they really like and they want to vote for, but they’re concerned that they’ll be throwing away their vote because this person does not come from one of the main parties.”

Here’s how ranked-choice voting works: In the primary or general election, voters rank their preferences for as many candidates on the ballot as they want. If one candidate doesn’t win a majority in the first round, the candidate with the lowest number of first preference votes is eliminated. The second choices of the people who voted for that candidate are then transferred to the other candidates, and so on until one candidate wins a majority. In New Jersey Assembly races, since two candidates win on each ballot, the winning threshold would be 33 percent instead of a simple majority, according to Zwicker’s bill.

“In a crowded primary field like what’s going to come up next year [in the presidential election], you could see where this would allow you to have a greater say in who you want,” Zwicker said.

There are several obstacles to establishing ranked-choice voting in New Jersey. For one, the state’s voting machines are unequipped to handle it, Zwicker said. But, he said, there’s a push to replace the existing machines with ones that create a paper trail, and those could easily be programmed to handle ranked-choice voting. Zwicker’s bill would require the secretary of state to verify that all voting machines are equipped to handle the system before the law takes effect.

Putting the system in place for gubernatorial elections would require voters to approve a constitutional amendment, Zwicker said, since the New Jersey Constitution says candidates for governor and lieutenant governor “receiving the greatest number of votes shall be elected.” That language would need to be changed to “majority“ instead of the “greatest number of votes,“ he said.

“It’s part of a movement that we see across the country to give more say, especially in primaries when we have this potential for a large quantity of people,” Zwicker said.

Ranked-choice voting has been adopted in several states, but usually at the most local levels. The exception is Maine, which in 2018 elected Democrat Jared Golden to the U.S. House of Representatives using the system — the first congressman ever elected with it. Former Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin sued to overturn the results, but an appellate panel dismissed the suit.

Such a system would likely face more than practical hurdles in New Jersey, where political power brokers are often able to effectively decide who gets elected in districts dominated by one of the major parties by endorsing candidates to receive the party “line” that bestows favorable primary ballot placement — and then seeing their choices all but rubber-stamped by county committee members.

Ranked-choice voting wouldn’t be an alien concept to New Jersey voters. Some municipalities, including Newark, have run-off elections when one candidate for mayor or City Council doesn’t get a majority. Ranked-choice voting is sometimes described as an “instant runoff.”

Creating more choices for voters — especially those less beholden to party machinery — could threaten to diminish those bosses’ power.

“I do expect resistance,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.

But, Rasmussen said, political parties can benefit by opening up their processes to more people.

“The traditional machine counties have found that the more they open up the process, the better off they are,” he said. “I hope that some of these county chairs can maybe get past their initial response and really take a harder look at the proposal and maybe they’ll see that this is a way to actually energize voters in their counties.”

Democratic State Chairman John Currie said in a phone interview that he doesn’t “have an opinion at this point” on ranked-choice voting. State GOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt did not respond a request for comment.