Project Ready, a non-profit organization that seeks to improve voter participation, wants the state to make voting easier and more accessible.
“There should be no confusion about what the results of New Jersey’s election mean – people want options for safe, easy, and convenient voting,” said Project Ready CEO Shennell McCloud. “There’s no such thing as ‘Election Day’ any more – residents can now cast their vote when and where it’s convenient for them – and that’s a good thing for democracy.”
McCloud pointed to turnout data from the November 2 general election, where nearly one-third of all votes were cast through vote-by-mail ballots or early machine voting.
The state made tremendous progress this year with the addition of in-person early voting and online voter registration,” McCloud said. “Still, turnout remains unacceptably low, and we need to do more to bring more people into the process, including allowing same-day voter registration, increasing the times and locations for early voting, and mailing all voters a mail-in ballot.”
A New Jersey Globe analysis one week after Election say saw a 207% increase in the use of mail-in ballots over the 2017 gubernatorial election. A Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University analysis showed that 207,863 voters cast their ballots in—person at early voting sites.