Tag: #voter-registration

With less than two weeks until Election Day, newly filed campaign-finance reports provide a closer look at the resources available to New Jersey's federal candidates heading into the final stretch.

The Federal Election Commission's October 22 pre-general filing deadline required congressional campaigns to disclose fundraising and spending activity from October 1 through October 14. The reports reveal substantial differences in campaign cash reserves, even in districts where recent presidential voting has become more closely divided.

Our analysis of federal campaign-finance data identifies six local races that stand out for significant financial gaps, substantial fundraising by competing campaigns, or notable differences between campaign resources, voter registration and recent presidential results.

The financial figures reflect reports filed by the October 22 deadline, generally covering activity through October 14. Fundraising and spending totals are cycle-to-date unless otherwise specified. Cash on hand represents the remaining campaign balance and may include funds accumulated before the current election cycle. Debt is reported separately, outside spending is excluded, and unavailable financial values are not treated as zero.

A Democratic fundraising advantage in a Republican county. A sheriff’s challenger reporting more money raised while the incumbent holds more cash. An independent campaign in a heavily Democratic corner of the state.

Those are some of the patterns that emerge when New Jersey’s county races are viewed through the records in Public Record NJ’s new Data section. Campaign-finance reports show the resources candidates and committees disclose. Voter registration describes the electorate. Recent election results provide additional political context.

Read together, the records highlight several county races where the numbers tell different stories. County party committee filings add another layer of context about the resources available to the broader local organizations, although those totals are not specific to any one race.

Here are five to follow ahead of November.

Who is running in New Jersey’s November 2026 general election? How much have candidates and political committees raised and spent? How has voter registration changed across the state?

The records needed to answer those questions are public, but they are spread across different agencies, reports and filing systems. Understanding them often means finding the right records, accounting for different reporting periods and connecting information that was not published together.

Public Record NJ’s new Data section brings that information into a set of interactive visualizations and searchable records. The initial collection includes November 2026 general election candidates, state, local and federal campaign finance, and New Jersey voter registration trends (2019-2026).

The data can be approached from different directions. Start with a county or congressional district, find the candidates running in a race, compare reported campaign finances, or look at how voter registration has changed over time. Source information and methodology accompany the data so the figures can be traced back to the public records behind them.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit on February 26, 2026, seeking a court order that would require New Jersey to produce records from its Statewide Voter Registration List (the “SVRL”), including “all fields” the department says it demanded in earlier letters.

The case, United States v. Caldwell, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (D.N.J.) as a statutory records-demand enforcement action under the Civil Rights Act record-demand provisions, according to the complaint. The defendant is Dale G. Caldwell, sued in his official capacity as New Jersey’s lieutenant governor and secretary of state, court documents indicate.

The complaint says DOJ is seeking the SVRL records to assess New Jersey’s compliance with federal voter-registration list maintenance requirements, including those in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Federal courts in California, Michigan, and Oregon have recently dismissed lawsuits by the Department of Justice that sought to force states to hand over full, unredacted voter registration lists, including sensitive personal data. Those rulings signal growing judicial resistance to the DOJ’s broader campaign to obtain private voter information from dozens of states, with judges warning the efforts could threaten voter privacy and state control of elections.