1. I agree with the Post & Courier. Straight party voting encourages the uninformed and lazy voter to follow their peers and cast a ballot for someone they know nothing about. This is how political machines are build, and why politics are so liberal in certain states and in certain political political areas.

   Party bosses love to bus in these types of voters with instructions and sometimes with incentives to vote a straight ticket. The office box ticket, requires the voter to look at the name of each candidate, and at least momentarily decide if he or she should be supported or not.

   The best government is when those elected are people who have been scrutinized and voted into office on their merits – not the party label they find themselves under.

   The Office box ballot, also can be designed where candidates are listed by lot or in alphabetical order, again requiring the voter to take a moment of time to think before casting their vote. I trust the day will come when there will be no ballots designed by party row or column.

2. Yes, the straight ticket voting column should go. It is, I believe a hold-over from the days when parties (or any group) printed and distributed ballots which a voter could deposit in the ballot box. There is, however, one sad consequence of the steadily diminishing straight ticket device – the party logos that appeared at the head of the party columns. I can recall from many years ago (1960’s, 1970) enjoying the Alabama ballots with the Republican Elephant, the Prohibition Camel, the Whig Collie Dog, some party with an Eagle, and the Democratic Rooster (yes, the rooster, not a donkey). One thing it did, I guess, is that it enabled illiterates to vote their favorite party easily.

3. Gene:

   Yes, I remember those days of the Alabama ballots with the multiple party labels. They were originally designed to help the illiterate to be able to mark their “X” in the box or circle which contained their party label.

   Some election experts claim this kind of ballot is how the GOP practically won all of Alabama’s Congressional Delegation in 1964. Most voters were “gunho” for Goldwater, and tens of thousands of them marked that “X” on the Elephant, and many did so, not realizing they were voting the entire GOP ticket, which included voting for some “foresighted” partisans who had qualified for offices from Congress all the way down to the Court house.

   And I’m sure there were some politicians who “kicked themselves” afterward who had thought about running for a lesser office, but didn’t, because they didn’t realize how many voters were going to vote the straight GOP ticket.

   While today the GOP uses the national party generic Elephant label, the Democrats got rid of the Rooster, as it was thought too related to the days of “States’ Rights and Segregation.” They use their own version of the Donkey with a state border outline as their party label.

   It felt good last Tuesday to see the ballot include the Libertarian label, although they lost the opportunity to have it placed on the 2nd line of the ballot by not using the words, ALABAMA LIBERTARIAN PARTY, instead using the words LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF ALABAMA. And the poor ole Constitution(al) Party lost the chance (in the two counties where they had candidates)to have been listed FIRST on the ballot by not using the words ALABAMA CONSTITUTION(AL) PARTY, instead using the words “CONSTITUTION(AL)PARTY OF ALABAMA.

   Still, the Office Box ballot would be best, as it makes it harder for the party bosses and special interest groups to steer the uninformed masses to vote the straight party ticket, which sometimes gives us public officials who do not have the people’s best interest at heart.

4. Before the government printed ballots, ballots were technically write-in ballots. If you were wealthy enough to own a sheet of paper, and a quill pen, and knew how to write you could prepare your own ballot.

   But there were early court rulings that mechanically-printed ballots were as valid as hand-written ones. Newspapers might print ballots, containing names of often mentioned candidates. But newspapers were as partisan as any modern website, and might omit candidates that they opposed. Political parties would also print ballots, and their “campaigns” consisted of distributing their ballots (and disrupting the distribution of opponents).

   But a voter still had the right to create their own ballot. So they would cross-out candidates on a printed ballot and write in the name of their own.

   Government-printed ballots often just pieced together the party-printed ballots, which resulted in party columns, which became party rows or lines on voting machines.

   In Texas, at least as late as 1944, you would vote against candidates by crossing off their name. If you wanted to vote against all of a party’s candidates, you could simply draw a vertical line down a party’s column. The Texas Regulars only had presidential elector candidates, since they were opposed to FDR’s re-election, and the other Democratic candidates had been chosen in the primary.
   So they urged voters to just cross-out the Democrat presidential electors.

   Some time since then, voting became affirmative, and instead of placing an X though a name to not vote for him, you would place an X next to the name to vote for him, and instead of a vertical line to cross-out all of a party’s candidates, there was an X to vote for all of a party’s candidate.

   In Texas, you can override the straight-ticket device on individual races, by voting for individual candidate of another party. This is a replacement for the old system of leaving gaps in your vertical line. Supporters of the Texas Regulars were in essence urged to vote a straight Democratic ticket, with the exception of the president.

   I have voted an absentee ballot in the 1970s with (D) Roosters and (R) Eagles. Regular voting was on voting machines, and I don’t recall if they had pictures.

   You only had to prepare one precinct-specific ballot labels for each voting machine, with the legislative races, and other districts specific to that race. But you would need to prepare perhaps dozens of absentee ballots. Instead of doing that for each precinct, they instead printed ballots for each district race. These were mimeographed on different sheets of colored paper, and then cut apart on paper cutters, and then the correct races for an absentee’s voters precinct would be placed in the packet sent out to the voter.

5. “Straight party voting encourages the uninformed and lazy voter to follow their peers and cast a ballot for someone they know nothing about.” & ” … and why politics are so liberal in certain states and in certain political political areas” And your proof for this is?

   What a load of bull taco. With a smell of racism in it.

   Straight party voting makes it easier and faster for everyone, not just “lazy”, “uninformed” “liberals”.
   When I voted straight party all I needed to do to vote for other candidates in different parties or independents was pull their lever or punch the hole by there name. That cancelled out the straight party vote for that specific office.

   So I could vote for all the candidates in one party and three in another party with four easy actions instead of voting for every candidate one at a time, page after page after page. Lazy? No! More efficient? Yes!

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