NJ Unaffiliated voters CAN vote in the Feb 5 primary

by: danpreston

Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 04:03:40 PM EST

I keep hearing misinformation about the eligibility of unaffiliated voters to vote in the NJ Presidential Primary on February 5. So I looked for a clear and authoritative statement on the subject.

I found this press release from the NJ Office of the Attorney General, the ultimate authority in these matters. Here's the money quote:

New Jersey?s primary election law allows unaffiliated voters ? those registered voters who never affiliated with the Republican or Democratic parties -- to choose a party on Primary Day and vote in the primary. However, voters already registered as Democrats can only vote in the Democratic primary; similarly, voters already registered as Republicans can only vote in the GOP primary. Cross-over voting is not allowed. The deadline for switching party affiliations was December 17.

There were almost 4.8 million people registered to vote before the Nov. 6, 2007 general election, including 1,164,504 Democrats, 874,457 Republicans and 2,756,759 unaffiliated voters.

The voter statistics underscore how major this is: Only about 24 percent of voters statewide are Dems, and about 18 percent are Repubs. The rest - about 58 percent - are "unaffiliated." So any news organization or other source that gets this wrong is doing a huge disservice to a vast majority of NJ voters.

So ... please pass the above info along to anyone who needs it  - especially reporters or others in a position to [mis]inform voters!

And ... I'd really like to know if you hear/see/read inaccurate stories anywhere in the media.