The Jersey Jive: A state, a scandal, a legacy.

There's one question that wasn't satisfactorily answered in all the fighting over Robert Torricelli's scandal-driven withdrawal from the New Jersey Senate race. To allow Torricelli to pull out, and to allow Democrats to replace him with former senator Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey supreme court had to ignore a state law that forbids such changes within 51 days of an election. Which leaves the question: If it could be so easily thrown aside, what was the purpose of the law in the first place?

Ask legal experts in New Jersey, and they'll tell you the deadline provision of New Jersey Statute 19:13-20 was always more of a practical guideline than an actual law. "The real original intent was to provide an administrative mechanism to do two things," says Richard Perr, an adjunct professor of law at Rutgers University in Camden. "One, to allow parties to fill an open ballot position, and two, to provide some sort of administrative cushion to those people who are supervising the election." In other words, the deadline was created as a way to make sure election officials had enough time to print ballots and perform other tasks necessary for voting to take place.

Frank Askin, another widely cited Rutgers professor, concurs. "Why do we have the law? Presumably to give the county clerks enough time to get their ducks in a row." Though Askin agrees with Perr on the purpose of the law, he predicted before the state supreme-court case that the justices would decline to stretch the statute as much as they did. "I thought that since there was a legislatively set deadline, the court would be reluctant to tamper with it," Askin says. Now that he's been proved wrong, Askin adds, "But there's a long history in New Jersey of being very flexible about technical requirements in election law."

Indeed, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that, from the very beginning, the state supreme court viewed the question as a purely practical matter involving a flexible deadline. When they accepted the case, the justices ordered lawyers on both sides to be prepared to answer just two questions. The first was, "What is the current status of ballot printing and mailing for all counties?" and the second was, "How long would it take to prepare new ballots should that become necessary?"

That left Republican lawyers with little choice but to frame their response in terms of logistics. The shortened period created by Torricelli's resignation, they argued, meant that election officials wouldn't have enough time to prepare absentee and military ballots. In the end, while the justices rejected the GOP case, both sides seemed to agree that the main issue was whether the mechanics of the election would be disrupted by a last-minute change.

But there was an entirely different-and arguably more important-principle at stake that received very little attention. A number of legal experts believe that the law, far from being just an administrative guideline, has a higher, more democratic purpose. A preset period before an election, like New Jersey's 51-day limit, ensures that voters have enough time to evaluate a candidate before going to the polls, and thus are able to make an informed decision in the voting booth. How would the candidate perform in the job? What is he like? Is he qualified? These are questions that are answered in the course of a lengthy campaign.

"Every state has similar laws that say, If you want to be a candidate, you have to do certain ...