Thanks to a helpful commenter to an earlier blog post, here is a picture of the New York ballot for U.S. House, in the special election of September 13 in the 9th district. The image is very fuzzy, but it possible to see that the two major party nominees were in the top line on the ballot (each with multiple party lines). Then, all by himself in a lower part of the ballot is the third candidate in the race, Chris Hoeppner, nominee of the Socialist Workers Party. The design suggests that Hoeppner wasn’t necessarily a candidate in the same race. Of course an aware voter would understand that he was, but the ballot design gives an unclear impression about that.
Very poor ballot design. Or should I say crafty?
Here are the final numbers for this race:
Turner: R – 65,052 + CON – 9,632 = 74,684
Weprin: D – 62,570 + WFP – 2,841 + IP – 1,892 = 67,303
Hoeppner = 286
How many Donkeys stayed home in the gerrymander district ???
You wouldn’t have that problem in a Top 2 system.
#4, New York is just as capable of producing a bad ballot design in a primary election, as in a general election.
Rational regimes have —
Office/BOX
Vote for N — 1, 2, etc.
Name/Party
Name/Party
etc
Write-In
with the ovals on the left.
What century before the NY robot party hacks become civilized ???
Is New York still formatting its ballots based on the design they used when they had voting machines, even though they don’t use voting machines anymore?
joshua,
Yes, they are, and the format is horizontal for New York City and vertical for the rest of the state. The New York City Board of Elections is completely independent of the New York State Board. New York City has its own governing board and the New York State Board governs the rest of the state, and lots of election law provisions differ in this way.
HAVA was supposed to have unified state election boards databases and voter lists, etc. but New York was the last state in the nation to comply (and the original vote on HAVA in the Senate was 92-2, with both New York Senators, Schumer and Clinton, the only no votes). Simply put, New York is a hard case.
#5 You don’t have party lines in a Top 2 system. New York makes the situation worse with their con-fusion system.
It is interesting that the ballot had an oval for the write-in candidate. New York law forbids an oval, and one of the technical requirements for their nifty scanners was that they be able to detect write-in votes based on scribbles in the area.