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Zhang said under the current system, some candidates “have a mask and are not revealing their party affiliations.”
He said there is less political in-fighting in neighboring towns that operate under a partisan election system than in West Windsor.
Andy Lupo, chair of the Keep West Windsor NonPartisan committee, said identifying as a Democrat or Republican is important at the national level, but that’s not the case for local contests.
“I’m more concerned with who the individuals are, I don’t really care about their party, I want to know what they’ve done for the township and how they see the vision for the township,” he said.
He said under a partisan election system the choice of candidates is limited and the party with the most registered voters gets a clear advantage.
According to Lupo, 43% of voters in West Windsor are Democrats and 12% are Republicans. Also, 44% of voters are unaffiliated and the remaining 1% is a mix of other groups. If the election system is changed, independent voters would need to change their affiliation and become a Democrat or Republican to cast their ballot in the primary.
“Why should independents have to make a choice of the Democratic or Republican party, they’re independents for a reason,” Lupo said.
Joe Charles, the vice-chair of Keep West Windsor NonPartisan, said under the current system party bosses are not controlling who gets on the ballot, which is healthy.
“The great thing about it is you can have people running who have different national political affiliations running on mixed tickets, so you can have a Republican, Democrat and an independent all run together cause they want to do the best thing for West Windsor, work for the town,” he said.
But according to Zhang, when there’s a primary, there is greater involvement in the electoral process and increased voter turnout.