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NJ Superior Court, Appellate Division/Direct
Frank Corrado/Barry, Corrado, Grassi & Gibson
On October 10, 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed a lawsuit in the state appellate court challenging the Attorney General's July 18, 2007, directive prohibiting free speech activities within 100 feet of a polling place, including handing out voter rights cards. In the July 17, 2007 directive, Attorney General Anne Milgram banned all contact with voters entering polling sites and all contact, except "exit polling," with people leaving polling sites. The Attorney General's Directive also requires media representatives or representatives of a public interest groups to obtain advance approval from their county Board of Elections to conduct exit polling, and also provide the Board with two weeks notice of the exact locations where exit polling will take place, and the names of each person conducting the polls.
The lawsuit claims that the Attorney General has exceeded her authority by banning activity that the legislature allows (as state law only bans "electioneering," "loitering," "obstruction," and "solicitation" within 100 feet of polling sites); that her directive conflicts with those state laws; and that the ban on handing out voter rights cards and engaging in other non-electioneering speech activities violates the free speech protections of the New Jersey Constitution.
In previous elections, the ACLU-NJ, in conjunction with other public interest organizations, organized volunteers to hand out voter rights cards on election days to inform individuals of their rights at the polls. The voter rights cards provide general information and contain no mention of any individual running for office or any public question to be voted upon. Since 2005, ACLU-NJ volunteers who sought to hand out voter rights cards within 100 feet of polling sites were threatened with arrest and were forced to move over 100 feet away, where they had little access to voters. At the times these threats were made, there was no official Attorney General rule that banned the volunteers' activity.
The ACLU-NJ seeks to monitor the polls and hand out voter rights cards to voters during the February 5, 2008, primary election. Therefore, the ACLU-NJ filed a motion to suspend enforcement of the directive during that election day. That motion was filed on December 27, 2007, and is pending decision by the court.
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