On June 5, New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan signed HB 503. It changes the order of candidate names on presidential primary ballots. The old law listed them in alphabetical order. The new law rotates the names, so that each candidate has an equal chance to appear on the top line. Rotation had already been used for candidates for all other office.
New Hampshire generally has the most candidates on presidential primary ballots of any state. In 2012 there were 30 names on the Republican ballot and 14 on the Democratic ballot. Thanks to Darryl Perry for the news about HB 503.
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In Texas, there is a separate drawing for ballot order in each county, and the candidates have an affirmative right to be present or have a representative be present.
The deadline for the drawing in each county is the 3rd Tuesday in December, while the filing deadline is the 2nd Monday. Conceivably, they could be held on different dates and times to permit candidates to appear at drawings in multiple counties.
You forgot Aaron Aardvark.
In the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary election, the Scottish Nationalist Party, was designated on ballot papers as “Alex Salmond for First Minister” along with the party logo (a stylized version of the saltire (St.Andrews Cross) and thistle, and the letters “SNP”.
This meant the party appeared first among the list of parties. In Scotland, most parties use “Scottish” as part of their name and logos. For example, the Labour Party runs as “Scottish Labour” in Scotland and “Labour” south of the border. This places them at the end of the ballot among all the s’s.
Scotland elects its parliament using the Additional Member System (AMS), where a voter votes for both a party, and an individual constituency candidate.
In 2007, the ballot paper had two columns. The left column had the party names, beginning with “Alex Salmond for First Minster”, while the right column column had names of candidates in alphabetical surname order, along with the party affiliation (eg Salmond, Alex Scottish National Party (SNP)”
The instructions said “You have two votes”, and then column headings and arrow pointing to a row of boxes that read “Vote once only (X)”.
So if you knew how to vote, and also understood the purpose of the two votes, the instructions would be quite clear. That is, if you didn’t need the instructions, you could ignore them.
But if you read the instructions, you might vote for two parties, or two candidates. Or you might vote in only one column.
Confusion was quite high (around 10%), perhaps exacerbated by the presence of a person’s name in the party column, and the only place “Scottish Nationalist Party” appeared was in the candidate column.
In prior elections, voters had simply been given two separate ballot papers and told to make an ‘X’ on each. So even if they didn’t understand how the votes would be counted, they could still vote in a way that probably reflected their intent.
But it had been decided that voters did not understand the interaction between the two votes, and that this might improve with a different ballot layout.
So focus groups of voters had the process explained to them, and then were asked to choose among several alternative layouts. But they failed to recognize that the ultimate users, would only be handed one alternative and would not be given any additional instructions. And the focus groups might not include the voters who might have the most problems, less well educated, persons with vision problems, or were to vain to wear their reading glasses, etc.
So in honor of SNP leaders, Alec Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, I offer:
Chovyan Han,
musician and member of the eponymous K-Pop band, and philanthropist and surprise Republican presidential candidate.