Voting & Democracy

Current Campaigns

New Voters Project

The New Voters Project is the largest grassroots youth voter outreach movement in the country—signing up hundreds of thousands of new voters. NJPIRG Student Chapters runs this project on college campuses throughout New Jersey. Read more.

Clean Elections

The high cost of campaigns—approximately $2.8 billion in 2006—invites corruption, reduces the number and diversity of candidates for public office, and forces the concerns of average citizens behind those of wealthy donors in a Congress that is heavily reliant on campaign contributions from powerful interests. A new system for financing campaigns is necessary to restore the promise of our democracy, one that allows qualified candidates who agree to spending limits and refuse private contributions to receive a set amount of public funds. Read more.

Lobby Reform

Recent congressional scandals demonstrate the role of powerful interests and their lobbyists, as they engage in unseemly practices from accepting gifts and travel junkets to outright bribery. Read more.

Overview

Our democracy relies on active participation and fair representation. NJPIRG works to keep our democracy strong—from improving voter turnout, to making voting easier, vote counts more accurate and verified, to cleaning up ethics. We’re also working to ensure that the public determines who wins elections, and not a few groups and individual with enough money to unduly influence who wins elections with large campaign contributions.

In 2004, the New Voters Project ran the largest grassroots youth voter mobilization effort in U.S. history. In 2005, we focused on New Jersey and Virginia, the two states that had state-wide gubernatorial elections. Now, in 2006, the New Voters Project will work to register and mobilize 18- to 24-year-olds at 57 colleges and universities across the country.