To see a sample ballot for New York city, for the November 7, 2017 ballot, see here. New York insists on continuing to use a ballot format similar to the one that was used long ago, when all precincts in the state used mechanical voting machines. The old machines, in use since 1892, used levers, and the old ballot format had to fit the machines.
But there are no more mechanical voting machines, so there is no reason whatsoever to use the old format. The 2017 ballot lists some Mayoral candidates on a top row, and there is a blank space in the middle of that top row with no candidate. Then more candidates for Mayor are listed on a second row. This suggests to the voter that the Mayoral candidates in the top row are somehow more deserving of attention. No other state has a general election ballot quite like this, although ballots in most counties of New Jersey are somewhat similar.
Because of the widespread use of electronic vote-counting machines, 42 states now use an office-group ballot style, in which all the candidates for a particular office are listed together. The voter goes from first one office, to another office, but each time all the candidates for a particular office compose a single group. There have been bills in the New York legislature to reform ballot access, but they never pass. Thanks to Mark Axinn for the link.
Your second sentence is in error. You might have meant “New York City insists on continuing to use a ballot” and not “New York State”. I live in the Syracuse area of New York (Central New York) and we don’t use a ballot like this. Ever since the changeover in voting machines, our ballots for the offices are listed in columns with the candidates names running down the columns. It’s true that if there are more candidates than rows available to put them on that they are carried over into the next column. But that problem is due to fusion voting and certain candidates being listed multiple times on the ballot.
Thank you. I took out the word “state”. But the upstate New York ballot for Nov. 2016 was just as bad, even though it is row-based, not column-based. Do you have any information on what the Nov. 2017 ballot looks like in your county?
To save Democracy —
how much election stuff MUST be in constitutions ??? ie even office ballot forms ???
— due to the EVIL, corrupt and/or stupid incumbent gerrymander robot party HACKS from Hell.
Where is that Model Election Law, at least ???
New York — one more obvious State to divide — Elephant N and SE, Donkey S — NY City.
—
PR and AppV
Onondaga County does not publish that on its website. However, Cayuga County, which is right next to us, does post some sample ballots. The website is
http://www.cayugacounty.us/County-Government/Board-of-Elections
Scroll down a little and you can see the “Election Day Sample Ballots”. The format is what ours looks like in Onondaga County as well as some other counties surrounding us. Your example must be a Downstate thing. And yes, I agree that our ballots can be just as bad when the column gets overloaded with candidates due to some candidates appearing on the ballot three or more times. Since the order of listing is determined by the number of votes received in the last Governor’s race, the third party candidates are usually listed way at the bottom of the column. And if there is a shortage of space, they are put at the bottom of the column in the next row, which can really confuse the voters. This is the reason we believe that the Libertarian Party candidate for Governor failed to get the 50,000 votes needed for future automatic ballot access because the voters couldn’t find his name in the column labeled “Governor”. This is one of the problems with Fusion Voting.
Sorry. That should read “And if there is a shortage of space, they are put at the bottom of the very next column, which can really confuse the voters.”
That ballot is repulsive. Maybe I’m strange for not wanting to play politics with a bloody ballot, but what is wrong with a simple list of all candidates by alphabetical order of their last name? Indiana has awful ballot access, but the ballots themselves are mostly reasonable, though it puts them in alphabetical order of political party, which I also find acceptable, and more clean. At least voting absentee, anyway. I don’t know why there are any ballots in this country for any election that isn’t straightforward, and I’d argue these New York City ones don’t come close to straightforward.
That design goes back to the days of voting machines (which I liked) and the days when New York had four ballot-qualified parties, not eight. But the idea is to separate the ballot-qualified parties from the other parties.
I was actually surprised to see that they took the party logos off the ballot.
The NYCBOE is not subordinate to the NYSBOE. When they were contracting for the scanning machines to replace the mechanical behemoths, they had separate bid processes. For some reason the NYSBOE required parties to be listed on rows, while the NYCBOE uses columns. It might have something to do with form factors. The NYS ballots are 8.5 x 11, while NYC ballots are 8.5 x 19, though they might be able to handle different sizes.
The rows/column order is based on the 2014 gubernatorial race: Democratic, Republican, Conservative, Green, Working Families, Independence, Women’s Equality, Reform. While Women’s Equality and Independence did not have candidates for the three city-wide offices, they did for other offices, and they used those columns for those.
But for Borough President in other boroughs, and city council member in other districts, the Libertarian candidate and Stop de Blasio candidate were moved so that all candidates for an office could fit in a single row. So they could have done it for the three city wide offices.
The NYS ballots have more rows than the NYC ballots have columns. This is in part because a row only has to be high enough to hold two rows of a name, while the column has to be wide enough to fit long names.
In Columbia County, all eight qualified parties have a nominee some place, and the first eight rows are used for them. If there is no candidates for a party for a particular ballot style, the row is left blank. The NYS ballots have an arm with a finger pointing to a row, with the party name on the sleeve of the arm. If a particular style does not have any candidates of the party, there is no arm, and the row is empty.
Under New York’s system of con-fusion, petitioning candidates are permitted to choose a party name or slogan, and it appears as if the candidate is a candidate of the party. In some areas, candidates petition to get on the ballot, in addition to running for a partisan nomination. If they lose in a primary, they can still appear on the general election ballot. In addition it gives them a local slogan (e.g. Good for Kinderhook). Because there is room for 10 or so rows on the ballot, there is room for these extra parties, which vary from town to town.
In Cayuga County, two of the eight qualified parties did not have any candidates anywhere in the county, and their rows were squeezed out, so there was even more rows available for petitioning candidates.
In NYC, the problem was that there was only eight columns and eight qualified parties. But for other races, they did squeeze the race down to a single row. More fundamental is that the ballots were designed to emulate the layout of the mechanical behemoths that the scanners replaced, plus the need to support New York’s system of con-fusion.
Texas election law requires ballots to be laid out with party columns, but allows them to be modified to accommodate voting machines, so they now look like they are grouped by office. At one time, a candidate would be voted for by crossing out their name. You could either mark horizontally through each name, or draw a vertical line down a party column to vote a straight ticket. If you wanted to make an exception for a particular office, you would leave a gap in the vertical line, and select a candidate in an adjacent column.
@Tim,
Ballots in NYC (as opposed to NYC) do have party logos. They also have an arm with a finger pointing to the row for a party, with the name of the party on the sleeve, so it looks just like a mechanical voting machine with the party name pointing to the row of levers for the party’s candidates.
NYC and NYS did not switch from the mechanical voting machines until 2010, and this article reported that the NYCBOE was bringing the old machines out of retirement for the 2013 city primary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/nyregion/lever-machines-briefly-replace-paper-ballots-and-optical-scanners.html
There was concern that the 800-pound gorillas with 20,000 parts stored in a warehouse in Brooklyn might not work after sitting idle for a few years. It appears from the pictures that the voting machines had eight columns, just like the “modern” ballots for the scanners.
In 2013, Mayor Bloomberg derided the NYCBOE “an elections bureaucracy rife with patronage, mismanagement, incompetence, and waste, … notoriously dysfunctional … and a dismal track record.”
JR Typo — 2 *NYC* in first 7 words ???
It still has to fit the sheet of paper, with room for write-ins.
My parents were poll watchers and they said the machines used to come in with 3-5 votes for Rockefeller.
@Demo Rep,
That should have read “Ballots in NYC (as opposed to NYS)”. The New York City Board of Elections is independent of the New York State Board of Elections. The county boards of elections outside New York City are subordinate to the state board of elections, which contracted for all of the scanners now used outside NYC.
@Tim,
Portrait layout, as is used in New York outside New York City is more efficient than the landscape layout used in New York city.
Look at those big boxes on NYC sample ballot. What are those for? So a voter can write reminders to pick up their dry cleaning, and to meet their friend for dinner after voting. Call 992-9779. Be sure to send a birthday card to their niece.