Partisan or nonpartisan? Voters in West Windsor, N.J. will settle the question on Election Day

Currently, three Mercer County towns hold nonpartisan elections: Trenton, Robbinsville and West Windsor. But that number could soon drop to two.

On Election Day, residents of West Windsor, New Jersey, will decide whether to stay nonpartisan, or switch to a partisan election system.

About 20% of municipalities across the Garden State have nonpartisan local elections. That means there are no primaries and candidates get on the ballot by collecting a required number of signatures from local residents instead of being selected by a political party. West Windsor has had a nonpartisan election process in place since 1993.

YZ Zhang, a former West Windsor councilman and chairman of West Windsor Voters for Transparency and Representation, said changing to a partisan system, where candidates are identified as Democrats or Republicans, will increase transparency.

“Some people may say I don’t care about party line and I just vote by individual based on the agenda, but some do, you have to be fair to all voters,” he said.

Zhang said under the current system, some candidates “have a mask and are not revealing their party affiliations.”

He said there is less political in-fighting in neighboring towns that operate under a partisan election system than in West Windsor.

Andy Lupo, chair of the Keep West Windsor NonPartisan committee, said identifying as a Democrat or Republican is important at the national level, but that’s not the case for local contests.

“I’m more concerned with who the individuals are, I don’t really care about their party, I want to know what they’ve done for the township and how they see the vision for the township,” he said.

He said under a partisan election system the choice of candidates is limited and the party with the most registered voters gets a clear advantage.

According to Lupo, 43% of voters in West Windsor are Democrats and 12% are Republicans. Also, 44% of voters are unaffiliated and the remaining 1% is a mix of other groups. If the election system is changed, independent voters would need to change their affiliation and become a Democrat or Republican to cast their ballot in the primary.

“Why should independents have to make a choice of the Democratic or Republican party, they’re independents for a reason,” Lupo said.

Joe Charles, the vice-chair of Keep West Windsor NonPartisan, said under the current system party bosses are not controlling who gets on the ballot, which is healthy.

“The great thing about it is you can have people running who have different national political affiliations running on mixed tickets, so you can have a Republican, Democrat and an independent all run together cause they want to do the best thing for West Windsor, work for the town,” he said.

But according to Zhang, when there’s a primary, there is greater involvement in the electoral process and increased voter turnout.

According to data from the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, the Keep West Windsor NonPartisan committee has received $12,784 in contributions, all from local residents. The West Windsor Voters for Transparency and Representation committee has received $30,897 in donations from various individuals and groups across New Jersey, including $5,000 from the Iron Workers, Local 399 in Hammonton. They also received $1,000 from the Trilon Group, a civil engineering company in Denver.

Charles said he believes most groups donating to the organization pushing for a partisan system are aligned with party bosses who are trying to gain control of West Windsor. Zhang disagrees.

“I don’t see party bosses as a sort of ‘dark figure,’ black hands control behind the scenes, that’s a little bit of a mysterious perception of some of the general public, but in my opinion that’s all part of the political system,” he said.

Zhang said he has friends and coworkers, who are non-Windsor residents, and he tapped into that network to raise money. He said he wasn’t sure why so many larger donations came from organizations outside of West Windsor, but he planned to look into it after the election.

Lupo said it’s inappropriate for out-of-towners to be donating money to a group that’s trying to change the local election system.

“I don’t know why a company in Denver would be so interested in West Windsor, we’re just a small community,” he said.

“I want elected officials to work together, I want them to have a common goal, I don’t want it to be as polarizing as it is on the national level,” he said.