A judge’s decision to block New Jersey ballot design that favors endorsed candidates is likely to stand — at least for now

A landmark court ruling that upended New Jersey’s political landscape last week by requiring an overhaul of the state’s uniquely designed ballots is likely to stand — at least for this year’s primary — as counties challenging the decision said Thursday they’ve run out of time to make changes even if they win on appeal.

Elections officials in all but two of the counties who had contested U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi’s March 29 ruling barring use of “the county line” — in which party-backed candidates receive prominent placement at the top of primary ballots — had dropped their appeals by Thursday afternoon.

Their decisions followed a late Wednesday order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit refusing to stay Quraishi’s ruling and instead laying out a schedule that would resolve the counties’ appeal by later this month at the earliest.

The problem, elections officials say, is that that timeline effectively forces them to comply with Quraishi’s instructions to redesign their ballots for this year as they’re facing a Friday deadline to submit New Jersey’s June primary ballots for printing.

They’d previously argued that the judge’s order — issued three weeks before an April 20 deadline for mail ballots to be sent out to primary voters — gave them too little time to comply.

“The eleventh-hour change would wreak havoc and [is] logistically infeasible,” their lawyers wrote in filings before the Third Circuit earlier this week.

» READ MORE: What you need to know about the federal court ruling against ‘the county line’ in N.J. elections

Still, the legal fight over “the county line” is expected to continue.

For roughly 70 years, New Jersey has been the only state in the country that allows county parties to bracket endorsed candidates together in prime ballot positions and relegate others to what insiders refer to as “ballot Siberia.”

Other states group them by the offices they are seeking. And critics say New Jersey’s unique system protects incumbents from primary challenges and grants an insurmountable edge to candidates favored by party bosses.

Studies have shown that such favorable ballot placement can make as much as a 40% difference in the outcome of the vote.

U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, running in the Democratic primary race to replace U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, sued in February seeking to abolish “the county line,” calling it a tool of the state’s entrenched and “broken” machine-style politics.

Its defenders — including the Democratic Committee in Camden County, which has been held up as a prime example of successfully using ballot design to diminish the prospects of challengers — say it helps voters clearly identify the candidates a party supports and prevents “fringe” candidates from taking over the nomination process.

In his decision Friday, Quraishi granted a preliminary injunction barring use of “the county line” on ballots for the June primary while he continues to weigh whether to order it permanently abolished.

(The judge later clarified that his preliminary order applies only to this spring’s Democratic primary. Republican primary ballots can continue to feature “the county line” this year.)

Still, the state’s county clerks appealed seeking to overturn the decision, arguing either in favor of “the line” or maintaining that they didn’t have time for the complete overhaul Quraishi had ordered.

The Third Circuit is set to hear oral arguments April 12 from the nine county clerks who remained in the case as of Thursday afternoon as well as from other interested parties.

But ironically, Kim — who had stood to potentially benefit from a ruling like Quraishi’s when he first filed suit earlier this year — may now find himself on the wrong end of the decision.

At the time he sued, Kim was locked in a heated primary fight for Menendez’s Senate seat with Tammy Murphy, wife of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and an early front-runner in the race. Tammy Murphy dropped out last month, leaving Kim to collect “county line” endorsements from most New Jersey counties.

Without it, his remaining competitors in the race, including community organizer Larry Hamm and labor activist Patricia Campos-Medina, hope more neutral ballot design can boost their odds.

Both are considered to be longshot candidates. But Quraishi’s ruling could have a more significant effect on down-ballot races — including one pitting Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla against Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez, the son of the senator, to represent New Jersey’s 8th Congressional District, which includes parts of Newark and Jersey City.

Campos-Medina and Bhalla were among a group of candidates who urged the Third Circuit earlier this week to leave Quraishi’s decision in place.

“Denying a stay in this case means that New Jersey for the first time in more than half a century, finally has the same opportunity that every other state in our nation enjoys in every election,” their attorney, Scott Salmon, wrote in court filings. “A free and fair election decided by voters casting ballots, not one predetermined by party bosses.”

Kim, meanwhile, has said he intends to keep fighting to abolish “the county line” for good, no matter how it might affect his electoral odds.

His attorneys said Wednesday that the Third Circuit’s decision not to immediately stay the order “brings us one step closer to ensuring constitutional, fair primaries without the county line.”