History of the New Jersey State Constitution
The newly formed State of New Jersey elected William Livingston as its first governor on August 31, 1776—a position he would be reelected to until his death in 1790.
Its primary objective was to provide a basic governmental framework that would assume control of the territory after the collapse of royal authority and maintain civil order.
[7] Among its provisions, the document granted suffrage rights to unmarried women and African-Americans who met the requirements of possessing sufficient assets or property as "freeholders".
Although the document is most commonly recognized as an enticement for settlers, it is in the basic form of any colonial charter or constitution, and guarantees such rights.
The American Revolutionary War was underway and George Washington had recently been defeated in New York, putting New Jersey in imminent danger of invasion.
Its primary objective was to provide a basic governmental framework and preempt New Jersey's fall into anarchy.
[13] A notable aspect of this original 1776 New Jersey State Constitution is that it provisioned suffrage to citizens without regard to gender or race.
As set out in its defining constitutional document, only three provisos restricted those claiming the vote: (i) being of "full age", (ii) having attained a threshold level of wealth, and (iii) having residence within a county during the year prior to an election.
Section IV of this original State of New Jersey Constitution captures these ideas in its single sentence: That all inhabitants of this Colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same, and have resided within the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the election, shall be entitled to vote for Representatives in Council and Assembly; and also for all other public officers, that shall be elected by the people of the county at large.
"[14] Some have argued that New Jersey's gender-neutral language was a mistake, but most historians agree that the clear intention was to allow some women and African Americans to vote.
Large numbers of single women did regularly participate in elections and spoke out on political issues in New Jersey in the 1790s and 1800s.
[16][17][21] New Jersey's 30-year experiment with female suffrage ended not mainly because of open opposition to the idea of women voting, but as a casualty of party politics and backroom bartering.
[16][17][21] Some historians have viewed the New Jersey episode as evidence that the founders entertained the possibility that women could have political rights.
The emphasis on liberty and natural rights in the Revolutionary period brought previously excluded groups into the political process.
For example, women took the lead in organizing boycotts of British goods in the disputes over colonial rights that led to the Revolution.
Another constitutional convention was held at the Rutgers University campus to rectify the apportionment of legislative districts after the Supreme Court invalidated the state's scheme for electing state senators geographically by county boundaries instead of population as violative of the "one-man, one-vote" doctrine embodied in the Federal Constitution's 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause.
