Libertarian congressional candidate Lana Leguía will not appear on the November ballot in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District after a dispute over who collected signatures for her nominating petition.
Leguía submitted 759 signatures, and election officials initially accepted 755 of them. Independent and third-party congressional candidates in New Jersey need at least 250 valid signatures to qualify for the general-election ballot.
The problem was that three people who collected most of Leguía’s signatures lived in New York. Together, they gathered 670 signatures. New Jersey law requires circulators of direct-nomination petitions for the general election to be eligible New Jersey voters, which includes a residency requirement.
Once those 670 signatures were excluded, Leguía was left with only 85 valid signatures — far below the 250 required to appear on the ballot.
What made the case more complicated was the guidance Leguía said she had received from state election officials.
The New Jersey Division of Elections had stopped enforcing the residency requirement, relying on a 2021 federal court ruling that struck down a similar residency rule for people circulating petitions in primary elections. Leguía argued that she openly used out-of-state circulators because she relied on the state’s longstanding interpretation and guidance.
An administrative law judge initially concluded that the signatures collected by the New York residents could not be counted under the existing statute. Secretary of State Dale Caldwell later reversed that decision and accepted Leguía’s petitions, citing the earlier federal ruling.
But the New Jersey Appellate Division later determined that state officials could not simply decline to enforce a law that remained on the books.
Leguía then went to federal court seeking to be restored to the ballot.
On August 31, U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi declined to put her back on the November ballot. He acknowledged that Leguía had been placed in an unusually difficult position by the state’s actions, but concluded that procedural and jurisdictional rules prevented the federal court from granting the relief she requested.
The result is unusual: Leguía says she followed guidance from New Jersey election officials, but the signatures collected under that guidance ultimately could not be used to qualify her for the ballot.
Without those signatures, she did not meet the legal threshold.
The case has also prompted new scrutiny of how the New Jersey Division of Elections decides whether to enforce election statutes that may conflict with earlier court rulings. Assembly Republican Leader John DiMaio has called for an independent investigation into the state’s handling of the residency requirement.
Sources: U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey; New Jersey administrative law decision; New Jersey Globe; New Jersey Assembly Republicans
By NJ RADAR Team