The New York Assembly Election Law Committee will hold a hearing on AB 3218 on Wednesday, March 9, at 9 a.m. The bill removes party emblems (also called logos) from the November ballot. Election officials in New York know that their state has general election ballots that are very confusing and difficult to read, but when they try to design better ballots, they are hampered by various election laws that make it difficult to design a clear ballot. One of those laws is the requirement that each candidate have a tiny party emblem next to his or her name. Also the party emblem must be printed at the top of each party column. Removing the emblems will give more flexibility for ballot redesign.
The sponsors of AB 3218 are three Democrats, Assembly members Patricia Fahy, Thomas Abinanti, and David Buchwald. An identical bill in the Senate, SB 3953, is sponsored by Republican Senator Richard Funke. A similar bill passed the Assembly in 2014 but did not advance in the State Senate.
Are the bills proposing to remove all the logos (in Michigan we call them “vignettes”) or just the ones by the individual candidates?
All of them.
100 years ago, the use of party logos on ballots was very important – it permitted illiterates to have some idea of/for whom they were voting. The old party column ballots were certainly interesting to view. I recall from Alabama ballots in the 1960’s a rooster for Democrats (several Midwestern states as well as Southern states used the rooster instead of a donkey for Democrats), an elephant for Republicans, a camel for Prohibition Party, and later – in 1970 – a gentleman running for Governor who called himself a “Whig” and used a collie dog for his logo. Another difference was the “Red State/Blue State” matter. Back then graphs of parties used blue for Republican and red for Democrats. I always associated the Republican Blue with blue uniforms of Union Army – perhaps this was why?