Here is a pdf of most of page one of the November 2012 ballot from Palm Beach County, Florida. Florida has 12 presidential candidates on its ballot, the second-highest number of any state this year. Colorado has the most, sixteen.
Nevertheless, the presidential part of this Florida ballot is very clear and easy to read. The only flaw is that Palm Beach County, like many other Florida counties, abbreviates the names of political parties to only three letters instead of printing the whole name of the party.
The order of the presidential candidates is determined this way: for parties that have at least 5% of the registration, the party that got the most votes for Governor in the last election is listed first, and the other such parties in order of gubernatorial vote. For parties with registration under 5%, candidates are listed in the order of filing their presidential electors. The Objectivist Party has the third spot on the ballot for President. Thanks to Steve Kolbert for the link.
Let’s just hope that the Palm Beach County voters can understand this ballot format, now that the butterfly ballot has been gotten rid of.
I think there are too many parties on this ballot and having too many candidates will cause voter fatigue. And I think this will lead some people who were thinking about voting for a smaller party to change their minds and just vote for Obama or Romney. Stevens and Johnson should be in the same party. Goode and Hoefling should be in the same party. Stein (who I support) and Anderson should be in the same party. Alexander, Lindsay, and Barr should be in the same party. I normally prefer more choices but at some point the differences in opinion between some of these people seem so slight that they’re truly injuring each other by running against each other….Also, Even though I’m a Green, I wouldn’t mind seeing Barnett have a good day. I want that Reform Party to hold on to the dream!
Abolish the timebomb Electoral College.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
#2 – They are in the same party. Which makes Stevens a traitor to his cause. To make matters worse, he’s the chair of the Pennsylvania LP. What party tolerates a state chair running against their presidential candidate?
#4, this year Tom Stevens functioned as state chair of the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party in an outstandingly effective manner. Probably no Libertarian Party state chair this year has had such a stressful situation to deal with. He had to arrange to have 20 volunteers in court, every working day (including some Saturdays) for almost a month. And he succeeded.
He told me in June that if he had known he was going to become the Libertarian Party state chair in Pennsylvania, he would not have agreed to run as the Objectivist Party presidential candidate.
If FL were using instant runoff/ranked choice it could end up being a bigger disaster than 2000:
http://www.mathgoespop.com/2010/11/instant-runoff-voting-in-oakland.html
That ballot is pretty impressive, with all the presidential candidates. The incumbent Republican candidate for State Senator, Ellyn Bogdanoff, once worked for me and she is one of the few Republicans anywhere I would vote for.