NEW JERSEY: The Right to Vote Wrong

The idea was so appealing to New Jersey’s state legislature that the bill went through unanimously last spring. It required all state officials and employees, schoolteachers and municipal workers to take a special oath of allegiance to the U.S. In addition, the bill provided that any political candidate who refused to take the oath would have “Refused Oath of Allegiance” printed below his name on the ballot.

A gaunt, wrinkled left-winger named James Imbrie, running for governor on the ticket of Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party, decided to fight the law. Imbrie refused to take the oath, went to court to prevent the state from noting the fact on the ballot.

He lost in the lower court, but last week the appellate division of the New Jersey superior court upheld him.

The state constitution, said the court, already requires an adequate oath. The loosely worded new law would deny New Jerseyites an essential constitutional right —”the right to select unworthy candidates, candidates who the legislature fears might bring ruin to the state.”