A New Jersey county that could play a decisive role in the next month’s statewide elections will be reprinting its general election ballots after the Republican National Committee successfully argued that a ballot redesign unlawfully favored Democrats.

The dispute began late last month when Democratic County Clerk James Hogan replaced Gloucester County’s legally required party-column ballot format, where each political party’s candidates appear under a single vertical heading, with an office-block layout that grouped all candidates for each race together, regardless of party.

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Republicans argued the change undermined their visibility on the ballot and blunted their “Vote Column A” campaign after winning the position of Column A in the county’s ballot drawing. On Friday, a state appellate court ruled that Hogan’s layout violated the law and ordered reprints of ballots in time for early voting later this month.

The panel overturned an earlier ruling by Superior Court Judge Benjamin Telsey, who had agreed the design was illegal but allowed the ballots to stand, citing possible voter confusion. The appellate court said those concerns were unsupported by evidence and ordered new, column-style ballots for in-person voting.

“The existing ballot design does not comply with [state laws] which plainly require ballots for the general election to be arranged in a ‘column’ format,” the judges wrote, according to a portion of the ruling seen by New Jersey Globe. “Defendants point to nothing in these provisions that would afford a county clerk any discretion to depart from that format.”

The move was especially controversial because Gloucester is one of several swing counties in New Jersey that have trended more Republican in recent years. Of the state’s 21 counties, 18 saw double-digit point swings toward President Donald Trump between 2020 and 2024. Only Burlington, Gloucester, and Cape May saw single-digit shifts, but those were still in Trump’s favor.

The design change could have limited Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli’s influence in Gloucester County, where two competitive state Assembly seats and control of the county government are also on the line this year.

Ciattarelli is facing off against Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill to determine who will succeed Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

Election officials must now prepare the column ballot design by Wednesday to meet the Oct. 25 early voting deadline. Mail voters will still use the old office-block ballots, while in-person voters will receive corrected versions.

Last month, Telsey ruled that the clerk’s design violated state law but declined to order a reprint. Telsey did, however, order the county to reimburse Republicans $26,007 for campaign materials affected by the illegal ballot design.

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The lawsuit was backed by RNC Chairman Joe Gruters and led by attorneys for the Dhillon Law Group, founded by Harmeet Dhillon, now the assistant attorney general who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“Democrats in New Jersey tried to secretly redesign ballots to make it harder for voters to choose Republican candidates,” Gruters said following the decision Friday. The “court made clear they cannot ignore state election law.”