Jersey City and prisoners votes
New Jersey can start by decentralizing state legislative power, as I just noted. It can promote aggressive, government-sponsored voter registration through full compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. It can adopt Early Voting and/or Election Day Voting Registration to increase access to the ballot. It can break the stranglehold of the two-party system in the state, or at least diminish the dominant slating power that the parties currently exercise. It can stop the outrageous, discriminatory and undemocratic practice of depriving the vote to persons with felony convictions — in Vermont, Maine, Canada, Puerto Rico, Israel and South Africa, prisoners vote from their cells. And it can readjust the Census count of prisoners for redistricting purposes to have them counted as residents of their home districts and not the districts in Gloucester County where prisons are located, for example. It can consider non-citizen voting in very local elections for school boards and/or city councils. In short, it can be a leader in expanding the electorate, a leader in democracy.
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