Senate Bill S1283

                                
 
BILL NUMBER: S1283

SPONSOR: KAMINSKY
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the election law, in relation to the order in which
candidates appear on the ballot.

 
PURPOSE:

To increase voter participation by creating a standard order in which
candidates appear on the ballot.

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

  Section  1 amends the election law section 7-104 to require the execu-
tive candidates to be listed first, such as the President of the  United
States  and  Governor.  Followed  by  other  federal  offices  and state
offices. Following that, offices shall be listed in The order of offices
at each level shall be listed in descending order according to the  size
of  the electorate. Parisian offices shall be listed before non-partisan
              

officers and before judicial candidates.

  Section 2. Effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

In New York, the current ballot order is structured in a way that  judi-
cial  candidates are listed prior to congressional and state candidates.
Very few members of the public actually know who the judicial candidates
are, and these candidates are often unopposed and listed on all the same
party lines. When the Board of Elections list  the  candidates  in  this
manner  on a ballot and force candidates in competitive races to the end
of the ballot, it results in drop-offs, when voters decide on the presi-
dent for example, but leave blank all other races on  the  ballot.  Take
for example congressional races in counties with Supreme Court elections
and  those  without  -  in  Albany, without such races, the drop-off was
about 2.4% between the presidential candidates and congress  whereas  in
Nassau  drop-off  was  7.05%. More specifically, in the race for the 4th
Congressional District, there were 28,742 undervotes, whereas in Albany,
for the 20th Congressional District there were  only  4,149  people  who
decided  not to vote for this congressional position. These numbers show
that if the congressional candidates were  listed  before  the  judicial
ones  in  Nassau  County, more people would have been likely to complete
their ballots.

This bill looks  to  address  this  drop-off  issue  by  establishing  a
consistent  and  logical  structure for how the Board of Elections would
list the offices for election. Executive positions like the President of
the United States and Governor go first, followed by other  federal  and
state  offices. All candidates who do not have an affiliation to a poli-
tical office or are judicial candidates who are viewed as  non-partisan,
would  be  listed  on the latter half of the ballot. This is because the
non-partisan offices, and judges, who are often unknown and nominated by
a judicial convention, rarely run opposed and typically  get  the  nomi-
nation  of  multiple  parties,  which  is puzzling to voters. By putting
these offices on the second half of a ballot, and not in the middle,  it
will  decrease the likelihood of voters failing to complete the whole of
their ballots.
 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

None.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:

None.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
The  act  shall  take effect on the first of January next succeeding the
date on which it shall have become a law.