NJ Assembly Passes State Voting Rights Act

By Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor

March 31, 2026

Assembly lawmakers in a party-line vote on Monday approved a state-level Voting Rights Act that would create a new state office with broad oversight of election logistics, set up state-level preclearance rules, and boost language access requirements for New Jersey elections.

The bill, which passed the Assembly in a 53-20 vote, would create a voting rights division within the state Treasury and give the office broad oversight powers over election administration in municipalities with a history of voting rights violations.

“At a time when we are seeing federal voting protections dismantled, New Jersey is stepping up and leading the way,” said Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (D-Mercer), the bill’s sponsor and chair of the Legislative Black Caucus.

The bill would restore a requirement that localities with a history of discrimination or voter intimidation seek approval from the voting rights division before changing election rules.

Those rules, called preclearance, were a hallmark of the federal Voting Rights Act before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated the formula used to determine the localities that were subject to preclearance, which has since been inoperative.

The New Jersey legislation would place counties or municipalities under preclearance if they become subject to a court order or administrative action under the state or federal Voting Rights Acts, or the 14th and 15th Amendments. Those party to a consent decree or a final determination by the civil rights division could also become subject to preclearance.

Areas where members of a protected class are disproportionately arrested could also face preclearance under the bill.

Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (Photo by Hal Brown/New Jersey Monitor)

“Since 2013, the Supreme Court has significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but here in New Jersey, we are doing the right thing,” Reynolds-Jackson said.

Language access rules would grow stronger under the bill, which would require election materials be printed in additional languages if at least 2% of residents in a municipality — but at least 100 people — speak that language and have limited English proficiency.

In larger municipalities, that requirement would activate if more than 4,000 share a language and speak limited English. The federal Voting Rights Act sets that bar at 10% of residents or 10,000 people.

Republican members questioned the need for voting protections. Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger (R-Monmouth) called it “a solution in search of a problem.”

“Rather than voter suppression, the problem we should be addressing is voter apathy,” he said. “That can be addressed by ensuring the integrity of our elections through updating and eliminating ineligible voters from the voter rolls and requiring voter ID.”

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly made unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud for which evidence does not exist.

National Republicans operated for nearly four decades under a consent decree for the party’s role in a voter intimidation scheme that deployed armed off-duty police officers to intimidate non-white voters in heavily Democratic areas in 1981. That consent decree was only lifted in 2017.

The bill’s passage through the Assembly marks the height of its progress through the Legislature. Though it moved through committees in the lower chamber in the previous legislative session, it did not reach a floor vote before a new Legislature was seated in January.

The measure has not advanced in the Senate, nor did it move there in the prior legislative session.

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