Today on the New Jersey Election ballot there was a question that seems to be confusing the vast majority of the state’s voters. Voters find it ironic that the state is asking an important ballot question to voters, yet make the question so hard to interpret that even lawyers aren’t even sure what it is asking.

John Steven, of Atlantic City New Jersey said, “I just voted ‘NO’ because I had no idea what the heck it was asking me.”

Others that were interviewed had the same type of reaction.

The question on the NJ ballot reads:

Shall the amendment to Article VIII, Section II of the State Constitution, agreed to by the Legislature, which: prohibits collection by the State of assessments based solely on employee wages and salaries for any purpose other than providing employee benefits; dedicates all employer and employee contributions collected for any employee benefit fund, and all returns on investments of those contributions, to the purpose of that fund; and prohibits any transferring, borrowing, appropriating or using of those contributions or returns for any other purpose, be approved?

What does it mean?

A “yes” vote means that you do not want the state government to be able and take excess money from the state unemployment-insurance fund in order pay for other items in the state’s budget. A “no” vote means you support the idea that they should be able to take excess funds and use them for other budget items.

The problem with a “No” vote is that you will allow the government to take the excess unemployment funds to use on other budget items. However, when you have years like this year, where unemployment is so high, that fund will not have enough money in it to cover everyone’s unemployment. A “Yes” vote would allow the unemployment-insurance fund to accumulate and be built up for times like this.