Senate Bill S5943

                                 
BILL NUMBER: S5943

SPONSOR: SKOUFIS
 
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 executive
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:

Senate

2021-2022: S1283, Passed Senate

Assembly

2021-2022: A4582, Referred to election law

 
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.