DOWN BY THE RIVER
Polls process questioned in Hub City
Activists seek ward-based voting for council seats

Amy Braunstein
Special to The Mirror

Something is happening across the river in New Brunswick. As Barack Obama campaigns across the nation on a platform of change, students and community members of Empower Our Neighborhoods (EON) have dedicated their summer to a referendum that hopes to make their city more democratic.

Currently, New Brunswick’s city council is elected through an at-large system. A range of candidates compete against each other and the five with the most votes are seated. With about fifty thousand voters, an at-large system means a candidate needs exposure to most of them. This large market gives a position of almost insurmountable advantage to those candidates who can afford mass media exposure, glossy mailers and the like, regardless of the messages and merits of the candidates.

Recent years have shown that the at-large council elections also mean that a council member is directly accountable, not to a neighborhood or particular constituency, but to the city as a whole. This makes it possible for officials to act counter to the interest of particular groups with impunity, so long as the whole city does not get fed up at once. Residents who are unhappy with the Neighborhood Preservation program (see sidebar) find it difficult, short of a federal intervention, to hold any official to electoral account.

These are the problems that EON seeks to address through a ward-based electoral system. Each neighborhood would elect their own representative(s), responsible to that more-clearly defined constituency. The New Brunswick Wards referendum proposes that six council seats be elected by ward, with 3 additional seats elected at large.

Under this system, those in neighborhoods who received unsatisfactory repairs from corrupt contractors pocketing city/federal money, meant for low-income families to repair their houses, could look to their council representative for help and restitution. They would be able to vote the councilmember out if he or she fails. The current system saw the Neighborhood Preservation program shut down for over half a year while the scandals were slowly investigated.

Ward systems in U.S. cities have allowed the most progressive legislation and the highest percentage of third party candidates to hold office, because the money of incumbent officials translates into power less directly in a smaller arena. In a Ward-based system it is possible to organize one or more local campaigns to go door-to-door, listening to the concerns of, and having the opportunity to convince, every voter in one’s district. Under these very personal and local conditions it is possible to break the grip of two-party politics in America.

This is not the first time, or even the second, that residents of New Brunswick have attempted to change the city’s electoral system back to wards since the birth of the at-large electtions in 1969.

This time, however, students and community members are prepared for an uphill battle. The Rutgers chapter of Tent State/ Students for a Democratic Society (TSU-SDS) has spent a busy school year working on this initiative. In May the student activists voted to make this campaign the focus of the summer’s efforts.

And they’ve brought friends. Members of a resurgent national SDS are coming to organize with EON and Tent State/SDS in New Brunswick from across the nation, Virginia to Texas, California to Michigan beginning in June.

Organizers report that the requisite petitions are nearly complete, and promise that this is only the beginning.

In apparent reaction to the wards petition, an ordinance introduced at the June session of the New Brunswick council would place on the November ballot a question of whether to form a commission to study the best system of government for the city. Similar study commissions were convened in 1988 following the 1986 New Brunswick Ward initiative, and in 1998.

According to New Jersey state law, two such similar questions cannot appear on the same ballot; priority is given to the first question officially registered. At press time, the city council is scheduled to vote on its ordinance Wednesday, July 2, while referendum organizers successfully submitted their petitions on Monday, June 30.

To learn more and follow the progress of the campaign, visit EON’s website at www.empowernb.com.