NJ SJC rules for Dems

It's official. The Democratic Party can replace Toricelli with Lautenberg. The ruling was unanimous:

It is in the public interest and the general interest of the election laws to preserve the two-party system and to submit to the electorate ballot bearing the names of candidates of both major political parties as well as of all qualifying parties and groups.

As expected, the Dems will have to pay for the ballot reprints -- the best $800,000 the Democratic Party has ever spent.

In a cynical move, the Republican Party is requesting that county clerks continue sending absentee ballots overseas -- so they can then argue that it's too late to change the ballots. There's no court in the country that will grant that request in the midsts of pending litigation.

The fact the court ruled unanimously will increase the likelihood the US Supreme Court will pass on the controversy. There are no constitutional issues at stake -- the regular election will proceed as planned in November, just with different names. And, given the beating the Supremes took in 2000, they should be quite reluctant to involve themselves in another political quandry, especially one where no parties have been aggrieved.

Posted October 02, 2002 03:58 PM | Comments (4)