Random Positioning of Names on Ballot Papers

[Rivershannon]

This topic – advantage of alphabetically listing names on Ballot paper- comes up from time to time. Yesterday a Canadian Electoral Specialist Ron Gould gave evidence to an inquiry into the Scottish Parliamentary election fiasco in May.
He stated: there is relevant academic research that provides evidence that strategising can influence the choice of voters. Faas and Schoen state that “voters who are not intrinsically [politically] motivated want to minimise the effort [of completing the ballot paper]. But how can they vote with a minimal effort? While they, of course, will have to start scanning the ballot paper, they will nonetheless scan it only until they find an acceptable – ‘satisfying’ – choice. [These] voters…start scanning the list, but their motivation to look for positive arguments fades as they move further down the list. As a result, they come up with more positive arguments for the candidates on top of the list, which again benefits exactly those candidates.”

Mr Goulds recommendations are:

[size=7]Offer more equitable access to advantageous positions on
Scottish parliamentary and local government ballot papers[/size]
To allow equal opportunity for all parties and candidates to access the top of the ballot paper or other advantageous positions, rather than always giving the advantage assigned by an alphabetical position, a public ‘lottery’ might be held where the names of parties and candidates would be drawn for their positions on each ballot paper.

Is it time to think of introducing this here?

[Owen Rooney]

The order doesn't actually have to be randomised. The simplest way to do it (if you don't have too many candidates), is to produce a number of ballot papers equal to the number of candidates, which then get assigned randomly to voters. The ballots would be alphabetically sequential (wrapping over from Z to A), but each would start with a different candidate.

For example, consider if we have 6 candidates whose surnames, for simplicity's sake, start with A,B,C,D,E and F. The six ballots would then be ordered:

A,B,C,D,E,F
B,C,D,E,F,A
C,D,E,F,A,B
D,E,F,A,B,C
E,F,A,B,C,D
F,A,B,C,D,E

Hence, candidate E would be in the first spot on 17% of the ballots, the second spot on the same number, etc., as would each of the other candidates.

One advantage to the above is that, unlike random positioning, the alphabetic ordering means that candidates can quite easily be found regardless of which ballot the voter is given.

[clareman51]

If e-voting ever comes in, randomness should be simple. But probably won't.

[michael1965]

There has been some research done recently on an electronic voting (or more correctly an electronic counting) system, which uses paper ballots. In this system, it is actually a requirement that the candidates be randomly ordered on the ballot paper (for particular reasons to do with secrecy).

There's no doubt it requires a little more work on the part of the voter to locate their candidates, but it does have the side effect of removing this advantage that some candidates have from their name.

[NM_123]

But what if you search for a candidate's name alphabetically - some lists are long.

[Rivershannon]

But what if you search for a candidate's name alphabetically - some lists are long.

I would think there would have to be a major Public awareness campaign in each constituency. Not a bad idea if it stokes up interest in the process.
BTW here is a link to Mr Goulds report.

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/e ... review.cfm

[The Hard Left]

This type of study is all very well but I would imagine it is much more relevant to a very large or uneducated electorate, the numbers of those who would choose a candidate this way In Ireland, would be very very small an Insignificant, even when it came to their lower preferences.

I could understand it in somewhere like Australia, where voting is compulsory. Maybe there might be an argument for 'rotation' there.

[Owen Rooney]

This type of study is all very well but I would imagine it is much more relevant to a very large or uneducated electorate, the numbers of those who would choose a candidate this way In Ireland, would be very very small an Insignificant, even when it came to their lower preferences.

I could understand it in somewhere like Australia, where voting is compulsory. Maybe there might be an argument for 'rotation' there.

It's not merely a matter of education. There is a subconscious tendency to favour the options you're presented with first, even if it's very slight. There have been 22 elections since 1937, and with an average of about 40 constituencies being contested in each of them, the resulting 900-odd votes should be able to show, to a good degree of statistical accuracy, whether voters in Ireland do actually give any preference according to the candidate's position on the ballot paper. I don't have the time to do the analysis myself, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if showed some degree of bias, even a small one.

With reference to Australia, I believe one of the provinces (although I can't remember exactly which off the top of my head) uses a system rather similar to what I posted above, and you're quite right about it being a more pressing concern when compulsory voting is taken into account.

[green]

It's not merely a matter of education. There is a subconscious tendency to favour the options you're presented with first, even if it's very slight. There have been 22 elections since 1937, and with an average of about 40 constituencies being contested in each of them, the resulting 900-odd votes should be able to show, to a good degree of statistical accuracy, whether voters in Ireland do actually give any preference according to the candidate's position on the ballot paper. I don't have the time to do the analysis myself, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if showed some degree of bias, even a small one.

IIRC, there was a High Court case in the '80s in which an unsuccessful candidate challenged the alphabetical listing of ballot papers. Expert evidence was called (may have been Richard Sinnott) and accepted by the court to the effect that candidates at the top of the list were indeed favoured by their placing. Might rustle up the case later, if I think of it.

As an aside, all ballot papers for internal elections in the Green Party use random listing of names.

[croppyboy]

Ahern, Bartholomew is the most alphabetical friendly name in the FF parliamentary party. Cowen, Brian our new vote-hoover is not far off the starting line either. Lot of female candidates use double-barrelled marital names to stay atop the ballot. Every little helps!