State lawmakers are expected to push back New Jersey's June primary by a week to avoid coinciding with a Jewish holiday.

Yesterday, the state's top three Democrats said they support moving the primary to June 10th since the currently scheduled date of June 3rd coincides with the celebration of Shavuot.

Jewish leaders requested the date change because many observant Jews don't travel, drive or use electronics or write during the holiday.

Governor Murphy, Senate President Nick Scutari and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin said they support the shift to ensure full access to in-person voting on Election Day and a bill co-sponsored by Scutari to move the primary will be considered by lawmakers on Monday.

Meanwhile, another big change is coming for next year's June primary.

Yesterday, lawmakers held a hearing on a bill that would redesign the state's primary ballots, and it's getting mixed reviews.

The legislation would replace Jersey's unique party line ballot with an office block design similar to what's used in virtually every other state.

But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

Senior writer and projects editor Colleen O'Dea joins me now with the latest.

So we had months of debate over this public hearings and a bill was just introduced based off of that.

What type of ballot can voters expect to see in June?

You know, for Democrats, it should look about the same as it did this year.

Republican House did not have the office block ballot this year because of a judge's ruling.

So but it's essentially going to look cleaner is a word that everyone uses.

So that you've got the name of the office and then the names of the candidates underneath.

No more of these long lines in an open spaces before you find other candidates.

It's essentially what almost every other state in the nation uses.

Yeah, I mean, this all, of course, stemmed from research and lawsuits, as you mentioned, about the party line favoring those who were backed by county parties.

But it looks as though, at least in the iteration of the ballot design that's been proposed now in this legislation, that that could still continue.

But in another form.

Can can you explain that?

Yeah.

So there was a lot of discussion of slogans and the slogan is that is the thing that goes under your name that says you know, you're a Democrat or you're whoever you are.

So that usually is where, in addition to having the party line that we had on the ballot, we would have the essentially the trademark name of the committee, Hudson County Democratic Committee, or, you know, Bergen County Democratic Committee, whatever name they've come up with.

So those slogans will still be on the ballot, at least in this bill's iteration.

And one of the most interesting things is that this bill currently says that unless you get permission from one of these county parties, you would not be able to use the name Democrat or Republican.

In other words, to try to confuse people who might think you got the party endorsement when you didn't.

You know, just about everyone I know it was everyone yesterday at the hearing cried foul over this.

You know, the vast majority of people want no slogans.

And certainly they think that preventing somebody from using their own slogan, as long as it's not, you know, the county party name is just ridiculous.

Yeah.

I mean, because the whole point, right, was that you shouldn't be able to differentiate which candidates have organizational organizational backing and which don't.

But I mean, could we expect to see that change before the vote on Monday?

Are you anticipating amendments to be made?

There was talk that there might be some language amendments.

I'm not sure that the idea of the loss of a slogan is going to be one of those.

But this is still the first step.

So the the the special committee is going to hear and presumably release this bill on Monday, but then it's going to have to go at least to the full assembly.

It might have to go to the Budget Committee because there may be some cost involved.

We're not sure about that yet.

And it's supposed to go to the Senate and we literally have heard nothing from the Senate at this point as to how they feel about this.

So the lawsuits initially filed had eventually deemed this type first type of ballot unconstitutional, the party line ballot.

Do you anticipate any legal challenges to this new proposal?

I think it's going to depend on what the ultimate, you know, final resolution is and what it looks like.

But, you know, I can tell you that I've spoken to the lawyers who are involved in that in the case that was originally brought.

There are two cases actually about this, and they've said that they certainly reserve the right if they think that this bill continues to try to maintain some sort of, you know, give some preferential treatment to certain candidates over others.

They're ready to go back to court.

And we will of course, be covering this on Monday.

Colleen O'Dea, thanks so much.

Thanks very much, Bree.