The Coalition For Citizen Initiative New Jersey (CCINJ) is a non-partisan group working to increase citizen control over government.

There are various government reforms that our elected party officials would be unlikely to embrace due to possible conflict of interest.   In general, State politicians have consistently demonstrated a reluctance to alter the system that elected them!

Shouldn't We The People have the right to decide on how we are governed?  For example:

• Enacting Term Limits
• Getting Money Out of Politics
• Opening the Primaries  (Paid for NJ Taxpayers) To Bring In More Candidates, Parties And Voters so We All Get to Vote
• Implementing Ranked Choice Voting
• Eliminating the "County Line" Preferential Ballot Treatment
• Putting An End to Gerrymandering

One need not even agree on these various reforms, but wouldn't it be great if the People of NJ could debate and vote on these various reforms directly?

26 States currently permit the People Citizen Initiative to restructure the political rules of the game in their State.  Why not us?

Washington, Maine, and Alaska have all used Citizen Initiative or other form of direct democracy to implement various government reforms that were supported by the People, but Not the Parties!

Despite being the place where Citizen I&R originated, New Jersey never adopted the process.   Initiative advocates in NJ actually won overwhelming support for an I&R bill in the state senate in both 1981 and 1983, but party leaders in the assembly kept the bill bottled up in committee.

Former New Jersey legislator William E. Schluter supported limited citizen I&R and fought political corruption for over 50 years!  He wrote the book Soft Corruption:  How Unethical Conduct Undermines Good Government and What to Do About It, published by the Rutgers University Press and presented before New Jersey's Eagleton Institute of Politics!

The Current System of Getting Measures on the Ballot (from Ballotpedia) has been proven ineffective and not satisfactory:

Citizens

In New Jersey, citizens do not have the power to initiate statewide initiatives or referendums. As of 2021, voters of New Jersey had never voted on a ballot measure to authorize a statewide initiative and referendum process.

Legislature

The New Jersey State Legislature can refer statewide ballot measures, in the form of constitutional amendments and state statutes, to the ballot in odd-numbered years and even-numbered years. In New Jersey, the most common form of referred statute is the bond issue.

The New Jersey Constitution provides two legislative methods for referring a constitutional amendment to the ballot. First, the legislature can refer an amendment to the ballot through a 60 percent vote of both chambers during one legislative session. Second, the legislature can refer an amendment through a simple majority vote (50%+1) in each legislative chamber during two successive legislative sessions. The governor's signature is not needed to refer an amendment.

Referring a state statute requires a simple majority vote of each legislative chamber and the governor's signature.