POLL OF NEW JERSEY VOTERS SHOWS SUPPORT FOR REFORMS TO MAKE VOTING EASIER, MORE ACCESSIBLE

Communities of Color Report More Challenges With Voting

NEWARK – A new post-election poll finds support from New Jersey voters for a broad variety of measures to make voting easier and more accessible, including in-person early voting, mailing voters a ballot in every election, same-day voter registration, and requiring employers to provide paid time off to vote. The survey, conducted by Change Research and commissioned by Newark-based non-profit Project Ready, also found that a disproportionate share of racial and ethnic minorities report experiencing challenges with voting.

“If there’s a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that we’ve seen first-hand how making voting easier has led to record participation in our democracy,” said Shennell McCloud, Executive Director of Project Ready. “This is an issue of equity because we know that communities of color are disproportionately impacted by obstacles to voting. New Jerseyans strongly support policy reforms to make voting more accessible, and our leaders should make permanent and build upon the progress we’ve made.”

A majority of voters gave positive ratings for the State’s administration of the November election and most believe that voting reforms will make voting easier rather than contribute to voter fraud.

Key findings from the poll of 958 New Jersey voters include:

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• Racial
•  and ethnic minorities report more challenges with voting than white voters.
• 49% of Hispanic voters, 41% of Black voters, and 22% of white voters say they’ve experienced
•  one or more challenges with voting during their adult life. Non-white men (52%) are more than twice as likely to report problems with voting than white men (20%).
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• Overall,
•  a majority of voters (56%) give New Jersey an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ rating for how they administered the November election.
• ​Just 33% rate the job the state did poorly. This is largely driven by partisanship,
•  as 96% of Democrats give the state a positive rating while 86% of Republicans assess it negatively.
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• Voters
•  support a number of reforms to make it easier to vote in elections, starting with increasing locations and times for in-person early voting, paying poll workers more for their time, and requiring employers give paid time off to vote.​
•  Majorities also support requiring employers to offer paid time off for employees so they can serve as poll workers, offering free childcare to parents who want to work at the polls, and implementing same-day voter registration. These have broad support in
•  urban, suburban, and more small town and rural areas as well as among white, Hispanic, and African-American voters.
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• Mailing
•  every voter a ballot in every election has the second-highest support among Democrats​
• (87% support) but strongest opposition from Republicans (92%
•  opposed). Overall support is 48%-47%. This suggests the President’s rhetoric on vote-by-mail has taken hold among New Jersey Republicans.
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• Voters
•  believe these reforms will make it easier for people like them to vote in elections.
• ​A majority overall (59%) feel this way as do white (52%), Hispanic (54%), and African-American
•  voters (78%). Majorities of those in urban (63%), suburban (56%), and more rural (58%) concur with this as well. Just a quarter (25%) believe these reforms will contribute to voter fraud.
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Click here to view the survey memo, methodology, and crosstabs.