More people than ever are registered to vote, but fewer actually do

Voter turnout for governor's races in New Jersey has been dwindling since 2001 and hit an all-time low this year, but some political analysts and election officials say there may be ways to flip that trend – starting with a forgotten bill likely to go nowhere before the end of this year.

“We can’t keep running elections like the state is still made up of farms,” said Bergen County Clerk John S. Hogan, whose county, like the rest of the state, has seen a dramatic uptick in the number of people registering to vote while the number of people actually voting has nosedived.

A bill re-introduced at the start of the 2016-2017 session, A-2002, after getting vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2015, aimed to revamp New Jersey’s voting rights laws and address low turnout by making voting more convenient.

The bill hasn’t seen any action since it was reintroduced.

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Dubbed the Democracy Act, it would allow for early voting, including extended and weekend hours up to two weeks before a Tuesday election. Online, automatic and same-day voter registration, among other initiatives, were also proposed under the bill sponsored by outgoing Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, D–Secaucus.

“Interest hasn’t waned,” said Eva Loayza, spokesperson for the Assembly Democrats. “We’re just hoping for better luck with the new administration.”

Gov.-elect Phil Murphy could not be reached for comment on the bill, but he campaigned on making voting “easier, not harder,” and supported the major reforms in the bill.

“We can’t keep having such rigid guidelines where you can only vote on Tuesday or by mail. We have to modernize our elections,” said Hogan, a proponent of the bill.

A Tuesday Election has not only been the country’s longstanding tradition but federal law since 1845, when the country’s economy relied on farming. With other days of the week set aside for religious worship or farmers’ markets, Tuesdays were the most convenient day for voting.

Today, a significant chunk of voters would disagree.

According to a recent study from the Pew Research Center, 14 percent of voters who didn’t vote in last year’s presidential race said they were too busy or had conflicting schedules. In previous elections, that reason was the most common for low turnout, according to the center.

Data show turnout in the state hit below 50 percent for the first time in 2001 – after the 9/11 attacks – and has been trending downward since.

In Bergen County, there were 69,000 more registered voters in this past election than the 2001 governor’s race between Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey and his Republican opponent Bret Schundler. But turnout dropped by 11 points – 53 percent in 2001 to 41.7 percent this year.

Similarly, the state has seen a rise in the number of registered voters. This year’s 5.7 million registered voters spiked from 4.6 million in 2001. Meanwhile, the number of ballots cast was 2.3 million in 2001, a turnout of 49 percent, and 2.2 million this year, a turnout of 39 percent.

All the while, the number of ballots cast in governor’s races has remained somewhat steady – in the range of 2 million to 2.5 million – over the last 16 years.

There may be more to consider to truly see a profound change in turnout than simply extending voting hours and days, said John Weingart, the associate director at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

“I don’t think turnout is going to go up any significant extent without something of a cultural change,” Weingart said. “There are certainly ways to make it easier to vote, which would be a good thing, but the motivation has to be there and has to come from people who think it’s really their duty to vote.”

Weingart said the cultural change could be prompted by popular media.

“Movies and sitcoms show people putting on their seat belts going in the car, as something you’re expected to do as a citizen of a society,” Weingart said. “I don’t think there are solutions for low turnout. I think there are reforms that could help.”

One such reform, the National Voter Registration Act, which became law in 1995, was known as the “motor voter” law and allowed people to register to vote at Motor Vehicle Commission offices when renewing or applying for a driver’s license. Other state agencies were made available to provide voter registration assistance, such as county welfare agencies and the Division of Developmental Disabilities.

Though “motor voter” might have spurred registration, “it also added individuals to the voter rolls who never intended to vote in the first place. Hence, higher registration but lower turnout,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University.

And more factors contribute to low turnout in the state’s gubernatorial races.

Governor’s races always fall on the year subsequent to a presidential race, which cause voters to experience "fatigue and disinterest," Koning said. Adding to that this year was a news cycle constantly inundated with headlines coming out of Washington, D.C. “It was exhausting,” Koning said.

Further, the race between Democratic Gov.-elect Phil Murphy and Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno was particularly “not surprising,” Koning said. “This was not a race that had high interest or high impact for voters in their everyday lives.”

A Rutgers-Eagleton Poll in 2015, when The Democracy Act was first proposed, said that 67 percent of New Jersey residents were supportive of increasing early in-person voting, an aspect of the proposed legislation. The majority of residents polled were also in favor of automatic registration when applying for a driver’s license, another aspect of the proposed bill.

“New Jerseyans are really behind The Democracy Act,” Koning said. “It’s just finding out what is the disconnect here between New Jerseyans thinking that there should be reforms made to increase voter registration and why we see such low turnout.”

Koning said a new poll is set to be released by the institute that reaffirms that “a large number of New Jerseyans think that something should be done” about low turnout.

There are some risks to consider, Weingart said, when it comes to casting an early vote.

“The downside to that particular proposal is that sometimes a significant number of voters change their opinion during the final weeks of the campaign,” Weingart said. “Voters get exposed to a particularly compelling debate performance, for example, running the risk of people casting their ballot without as complete information as they would have had they waited until Election Day.”

Cost is another factor to consider with early voting. Although an estimate was not available, Hogan said the cost would not be "crushing" to have polling booths open two weeks early.

“People have busy lives nowadays,” Hogan said. “For me, voting is my number one priority on Election Day. But there are people with other priorities and we need to give them an opportunity to vote on a day more convenient for them.”

Email: carrera@northjersey.com