The New York state November 2010 ballot (in counties outside New York city) will look like this.
Note that this is a paper ballot. It could have been arranged so that each party has its own row. Or it could have been arranged to dispense with rows or columns, and instead been printed in an “office group” format, in which all candidates for one particular office are listed together under the title of each office in turn.
However, this paper ballot arbitrarily creates one row for seven parties (Democratic, Republican, Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Green, and Rent is 2 Damn High). Then it squeezes each of the other four parties into dual rows. Therefore, the Libertarian and Freedom Parties share a row, and the Anti-Prohibition and Taxpayer Parties share another row.
There was some justification for such a ballot design when New York used mechanical voting machines. The face of the voting machine only had room for nine rows or nine columns. But there is no justification whatsoever for that ballot format when all ballots are printed pieces of paper.
If the Credico lawsuit wins, then Randy Credico will be featured in the Anti-Prohibition Party row as well as the Libertarian Party row, and voters can choose which line to vote for him on. But the basic bad ballot design will still be a problem.
Perhaps the folks who made the 2010 Iraq bedsheet ballot (about 3 feet x 4 feet) can help in NY State ???
Worse yet, there is still another independent party Richard neglected to mention. The Tax Revolt Party is running only one statewide candidate, for the 2-year US Senate seat. Bruce Blakeman is squeezed into the row shared largely by the Anti-Prohibition and Taxpayer parties. Why do the Greens and the Rent Party each get a full row of their own, and the rest doubled- (and tripled-) up?
There is a lottery for ballot placement and numbers get picked from a hat. The Greens and the Rent Party won the lottery this time.
There is an idiot rule in the New York State Constitution that requires everything on one page, so we get small type and squeezed-in-stuff everywhere. Yet another reason to have a constitutional convention in New York, to be done with archaic rules and regs.
Are you sure it is in the State Constitution? I thought it was just an ordinary statute.
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@Richard,
I’ve done a quick search of both constitution and law and can’t find any direct reference in either one. I’ll keep looking into it. It’s been discussed in reference to our changeover from lever machines to (mostly) optical scan machines and have been told that it’s difficult since it’s a constitutional provision, but of course we’ve been lied to before.
This is what I found so far. New York Election Law §?7-116(3), requires that the ballot order of candidates seeking a particular nomination in a primary election be determined by lottery in the 57 counties outside New York City and a rotational system in New York City.
Along with Pete, I’m a member of the PR Party. We’ve been looking into this today and the section of the NYS Election Law that seems most relevant to the “full face” assertion is S. 7-104, which indicates that the ballot cannot extend beyond the frame. This still does not mandate any type of “full face” ballot. In addition, there is no such requirement in the NYS Constitution.
However, I did come across a press release issued by the Brennan Center on November 16, 2005. The Center issued a legal memorandum during the evaluation and selection process for new voting machines required under HAVA, noting that the NYS Legislature and Board of Elections is engaging in an “erroneous and destructive interpretation of state law.” They cite the same section mentioned above as the incorrectly interpreted regulation.
The legal memorandum is unavailable, but the link to the press release is: http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/brennan_center_finds_full_face_ballot_law_in_new_york_does_not_limit_electi/
Hope this helps!
The paper ballots were created with the intent of being read by precinct level optical scanners. In addition, completed ballots must be capable of being printed by voting machines used by disability-impaired voters.
The fundamental problem is New York’s (con)fusion voting system. There are only 7 gubernatorial candidates and 7 senatorial candidates. Since New York does not have straight ticket voting, there is no reason to continue the party line ballot style.
Most New Age scanner ballots in general elections have separate boxes for stuff —
box for straight party voting — listing the parties
boxes for each office — listing the candidates with party hack labels — with standard Vote for 1, 2, etc.
NO horizontal party lines and/or NO vertical party columns.
What century will NY State join the 2000s ???
New York is so bad! How bad is New York, you ask? Well, the Primary Elections were held a month ago, and the State Board of Elections hasn’t published the results yet. I contacted them about two weeks after the primaries (most individual counties has published their results, but neither New York City nor the State Boards had) and they told me they would be done by the end of September. Three days ago I asked again and was told their meeting (to certify results) had been postponed until October 21st.
New York will get right when a constitutional convention calls them out, and not a minute before.
#11 Will the 2 Nov results in NY be official before the next crop of party hacks in the NY legislature take gerrymander office in 2011 ???
I found the Brennan Center legal memorandum mentioned by Brittany above. The URL has moved to:
http://brennan.3cdn.net/7c11ed9f84a8c0f73e_jbm6bh9rz.pdf
I suspect that the counties in New York could probably print the ballots less expensively if they were allowed to use a different format than this “full face” format. Perhaps before the next election season, the legislature will find that the rationale of wanting to save money is even more important than trying to confuse people away from voting for the minor parties.
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