In the previous chapters, I covered topics that are seemingly obvious questions to consider regarding the quality of a country’s electoral democracy. However, issues such as how easy it should be to vote and what offices people should elect affect voters before they step into the voting booth. Once in the booth, other questions arise that influence the quality of democracy. Who should be listed on the ballot? In what order should those people be listed? What infor- mation about the candidates should voters have available to them on the bal- lot? Should we know a candidate’s partisan affiliation? What about whether this person is an incumbent? How about a candidate’s occupation?
These questions do not receive nearly as much emphasis as those discussed in the preceding chapters, but they have a potentially dramatic influence on who gets elected and the quality of representation that constituents receive, perhaps as much so as the rules that guide voting. In this chapter we will examine several ballot laws beginning with who should get on the ballot in the first place. Then, we will discuss aspects of the actual ballot, including its design and the information that it provides to voters. I argue that we must always include a candidate’s party affiliation on the ballot; in other words, we should eliminate nonpartisan elections. Furthermore, we must guarantee that candidates’ names will be rotated so that one candidate is not always placed first, and we should strive for a consistent, simple ballot to cut down on voter confusion once in the booth. All of these reforms will make voting more democratic and allow citizens to vote more intelligently.
Getting on the ballot
If you are a candidate who wants to win office, it is virtually impossible for you to do so if your name is not listed on the ballot.1 The problem is that, in many states, getting on the ballot can be quite difficult. Because of federalism, each state and the District of Columbia have their own requirements for a party or individual to be placed on the ballot and, in the party’s case, remain on the ballot. Even in federal elections, states determine the rules for ballot access.
Generally, parties and candidates face some sort of filing fee or must obtain a
certain number of signatures to appear on the ballot, and in some states they must do both. For example, in 2004 for a “new party” or independent presi- dential candidate to get on the ballot in Arkansas, parties or candidates had to obtain 1,000 signatures. In states like Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Virginia, the party or candidate needed 10,000 signatures. In others, such as California and Georgia, the number of signatures required each year changes, depending on the number of registered voters, which is determined by indi- vidual state requirements to the effect that the party or candidate needs to obtain signatures equaling 1 percent of all registered voters; in 2004, 77,389 signatures were needed in California, 37,153 in Georgia. Colorado has no signature requirement; the party or candidate must simply pay a filing fee of $500.
However, the laws are more complex than just paying a filing fee or getting a certain number of signatures. For example, some states allow only registered voters to sign petitions, while others allow anyone of voting age to sign. In some states, the party has to meet one criterion to qualify for all positions on the ballot; in other states, parties’ candidates have to qualify for each individual office. In some states, petitions must be notarized; in other states they do not.
Furthermore, the filing deadline is different in each state.
Ballot access laws generally work against third parties and independent candidates. It is quite difficult, for example, for a minor party presidential candidate to qualify for the ballot in all 50 states. There are 50 different requirements with 50 different closing dates. It is extremely expensive for candidates to obtain enough signatures. The costs of getting on the ballot are further exacerbated because minor party candidates are often forced to retain legal counsel. In some cases, the candidate might argue that a state ballot access law is too restrictive. Other times the two major parties will file lawsuits challenging the signatures on a minor party candidate’s petitions, such as when the Democratic party filed lawsuits in numerous states in 2004 to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot.2 Because of the complex requirements to get on each state’s ballot in a presidential election, Nader only qualified for the ballot in 34 states and the District of Columbia.3 Even when candidates qualify in all states, the process to get on the ballot drains an already small campaign chest. In 1980, independent John Anderson spent about half of his budget just getting on the ballot in all 50 states.4 Since the two major parties always win enough votes to be retained on the ballot in the next election, they do not have to go through this unwieldy process.
There is debate over how much restrictive ballot access laws actually hinder the chances of minor party or independent candidates. Noted ballot access specialist Richard Winger writes, “Not surprisingly, minor parties are much more likely to win elections when such laws are lenient.”5 Still, it is highly unlikely that a third-party candidate will win an election, no matter what the ballot access law. Furthermore, not everyone is convinced that more stringent ballot access laws negatively affect third-party candidates. Political scientists
Christian Collet and Martin Wattenberg find that “ballot access laws explain very little of the variance in either the number of minor party candidates or the vote for them.”6 They continue, “At best, lenient ballot access laws allow minor and independent candidates to preserve their limited resources for other activities.”7
People in favor of more stringent ballot access requirements tend to make two arguments. First, they argue that it is in the best interest of the electorate to limit the number of candidates running in an election, otherwise elections become too complex and the costs of voting too high. Having to decide between 10 candidates is more difficult than having to decide between two.
You do not want the situation to happen that occurred during the Californian gubernatorial recall, mentioned in the previous chapter, when 134 candidates appeared on the ballot. Candidates needed 65 signatures and a $3,500 filing fee or 10,000 signatures and no filing fee to get on the ballot. Yet, the Califor- nian gubernatorial election was clearly a unique case; few races have more than three or four candidates on the ballot, even when requirements are not that steep. And, even in the recall case, the election was pared down quickly to three or four viable candidates. For all of the concern about the recall, it did not end up being much different from other elections. Furthermore, people often say that they do not vote because there are not enough choices. More candidates, then, may actually increase the likelihood of voting.
The second argument in favor of more stringent ballot access laws is that it protects the two-party system, which, as mentioned earlier, is exactly the prob- lem that opponents of stringent ballot access laws have. If it is indeed more difficult for third parties to succeed when it is harder to gain access to the ballot, then the two-major parties’ status as the two-major parties is protected.
There are few things on which Republicans and Democrats agree, but one is that they definitely like being the two major parties.
The pros and cons of a two-party system are beyond the scope of this book, although I do briefly discuss them in the concluding chapter, but it is not clear to me that less restrictive ballot-access laws threaten such a system.
Ballot-access laws are only one factor that hinders the success of minor parties in the United States. Even when third-party or independent candidates get on the ballot, and they often do, they are unlikely to win. This is primarily because of the single-member district, winner-take-all rules of most American elec- tions. For the overwhelming majority of elections in the US there is no prize for finishing in second place. The candidate who receives the most votes (a plurality) wins the election. As a result, a two-party system usually emerges.8 Under proportional representation, the number of party candidates who win is proportional to the overall percentage of the vote won by the party slate. In other words, if there are 10 seats to fill and Party A wins 50 percent of the vote, Party B 30 percent, and Party C 20 percent, then the parties would receive five, three, and two seats, respectively. Under the American system, Parties B and C would be shut out. As a result, many people consider a vote for a third
party to be wasted. To use an example from the 2000 presidential election, two candidates had a chance to win the election (Bush or Gore). Let us assume that Nader was your first choice, Gore your second, and Bush was unacceptable. It might make more sense to vote for Gore instead of Nader even though Nader was your most favored candidate, because it would help Gore, a candidate who was still acceptable, win and keep Bush, a candidate who was unaccept- able, from winning. In the end, Nader loses votes that he otherwise might have won.
The single member district, winner-take-all system is only one of several barriers to third-party success. Third-party candidates are regularly excluded from debates, they usually do not have the funds to run a competitive cam- paign, and they do not receive the same media coverage as the major party candidates. The point is that less restrictive ballot-access laws do not mean the end of America’s two-party system. Conversely, restrictive ballot-access laws may weaken democracy and threaten electoral accountability. First, from a democratic standpoint, restrictive ballot-access laws limit the number of options from which voters may choose. To go back to the Nader example, there were still close to three million people who voted for Nader even though he had no chance of winning. These people did so likely because they felt that neither Gore nor Bush was acceptable and they wanted their voices to be heard. If Nader was not on the ballot, then those voices would have been silenced.9 Perhaps an even bigger concern about restrictive ballot-access laws is that there is evidence that such laws increase the frequency of uncontested House races.10 According to a study by political scientists Stephen Ansolabe- here and Alan Gerber, stringent filing fees and petition requirements actually discouraged one of the two major parties from running candidates in many House races. As the authors write:
The usual justification states give for their restrictive ballot access laws is that they need to prevent cluttering the ballot, which would result if many frivolous candidates filed for office. The problem, though, is not that voters face too many choices, but too few. Our findings reveal that laws governing access to the ballot stunted competition in U.S. House races during the 1980s.11
If people do not have a choice when voting, then accountability suffers.
Moreover, even a nominally contested race may raise the incumbent’s aware- ness about issues that constituents are concerned about. Ansolabehere and Gerber continue:
Elections are crude instruments with which constituents discipline their representatives. Absence of even a nominal challenger short-circuits the electoral connection. When an election is uncontested, an important opportunity for voters and their representatives is lost.12
The fact that the two-party system would not be affected by less restric- tive ballot-access laws, that these laws do not usually lead to overly crowded ballots and even when they do the election quickly is pared down to just a few serious challengers, and that electoral choice and accountability is hindered by restrictive ballot access laws are all reasons why states should make it easier for candidates to get on the ballot.
Candidate information on the ballot
Obviously, whether a candidate is placed on the ballot will influence whether a person votes for that candidate, but it is not the only ballot-related stimulus on vote choice. As discussed in Chapter 3, Americans vote for a large number of offices. Most of these elections receive virtually no media coverage, making information about the contests difficult to come by. As a result, for many of these “down ballot” contests—elections for offices that are listed at the bottom of the ballot—voters are starved for information about the candidates.
They either choose not to participate in these races or they look for any cue that might give them at least some information about the candidates. For instance, in low-information elections voters often rely on a candidate’s race or gender when determining their vote.13
Often, the ballot itself will provide the voters with cues. Perhaps the most useful cue—and the most recognized—that is sometimes available on the bal- lot is the candidates’ partisan affiliations. While the candidates’ party identifi- cations are always listed on the ballot for federal offices,14 the vast majority of local elections in the United States, and many elections for judge and statewide office are nonpartisan; elections for the Nebraska state legislature are nonparti- san as well. In nonpartisan elections, the candidates’ names are listed on the ballot without their party affiliations next to them.
As with many of the reforms mentioned in this book, the idea for nonparti- san elections originated with the progressive movement around the turn of the twentieth century. At the time, political machines controlled almost all aspects of government in many cities. The machine would determine the party’s nom- inee, which was tantamount to determining who the elected official would be.
Because of patronage, party bosses were able to demand loyalty from many of the cities’ residents, especially the large immigrant populations who came to the United States with very little, only to be helped by the political machine in obtaining a job.
As a result of the powerful political machines, the progressives began advo- cating electoral reforms designed to cripple the machines’ stranglehold on local government. For example, progressives pushed the Australian ballot to make voting private. Before the Australian ballot, a uniform ballot in a precinct did not exist. Instead, political parties would give color-coded ballots to their supporters who would then cast the ballots in the open. The machines often had “election officials” who watched to be sure that people voted the way they
were supposed to. Progressives also introduced the party primary to limit the control of the political machine over the nomination process (see Chapter 8).
Another significant reform was the nonpartisan ballot. Progressives believed that if party politics were removed from the local level, then it would limit the power of the party machines and make government more responsive to the people. Not only would nonpartisan elections weaken the party machines, but also they would keep the divisive influence of national parties out of local government. After all, the old adage is that “there is no Democratic or Repub- lican way to fill a pothole.” Because most of municipal government was administrative in nature, progressives felt that people should choose the best leaders and managers to make government run effectively, not the person who was most political.
Removing party affiliation from the ballot, progressives argued, would force people to seek out information that was more relevant to the election than party affiliation.15 The problem is that there is no empirical evidence that people actually do so. In fact, most of the research on nonpartisan elections indicates that people either skip the election altogether, rely on less reliable cues than partisanship, or simply guess when deciding for whom to vote.
In my work with Brian Schaffner and Gerald Wright, we find that voter roll-off—people who turn out to vote, but do not vote for a specific office—is generally higher in nonpartisan elections.16 For example, the average roll-off in the Kansas state Senate elections between 1984 and 1990 was only 6 percent.
However, in Nebraska, a state that is comparable to Kansas politically and demographically, but whose state legislative elections are nonpartisan, the average roll-off was 39 percent over the same time period, more than six times greater than the roll-off in Kansas. Other studies find similar results when comparing nonpartisan and partisan judicial elections.17
It is not simply the fact that, in some cases, millions of people who already made the effort to turn out to vote skip certain elections that is troublesome, but the fact that, in some cases, millions of people are voting in these elections with seemingly little information. Schaffner and I examined statewide elec- tions in California, which include several partisan offices like insurance com- missioner, attorney general, and treasurer, and one nonpartisan office, the superintendent of public instruction. We found that the more education a person had the more likely they were to provide an answer to a vote choice question for the superintendent race in a preelection survey.18 Presumably, those with more education would then be more likely to vote. The problem is that those who provided an answer to the vote choice question were less likely to choose the candidate from their party in the nonpartisan election than in the partisan ones. For example, in the superintendent race that we studied, incum- bent Delaine Eastin (a Democrat) ran against Gloria Matta Tuchman (a Republican). Each candidate took positions that were consistent with their parties’ platforms. Eastin strongly opposed school vouchers and supported bilingual education; Tuchman supported school vouchers and was a cosponsor
of an antibilingual education measure that California voters had approved. In other words, there should be no reason why Democrats would be less likely to support Eastin compared to Democratic candidates for other statewide parti- san offices and vice versa for Republicans and Tuchman. Yet, that is exactly what we found. People appeared to either be guessing or using less reliable cues when making their vote choices.
Furthermore, nonpartisan elections have the potential to undermine repre- sentation. Schaffner, Wright, and I find that nonpartisan elections advantage the minority party in an area because they hide a reliable cue from voters.19
“Consider a city council district where Democratic candidates tend to win 70 percent of the vote. In a partisan election, a Democratic candidate is likely to win, based solely on the normal Democratic vote he or she can expect to receive by being a Democrat. Likewise, a Republican in such a district faces an uphill battle once voters learn of his or her party affiliation. However, if party labels are removed from consideration, voters will rely on other cues or even vote randomly. Relative to a partisan contest, this situation favors the Repub- lican because it is more likely to put him or her on an equal footing with the Democratic candidate. Of course, this situation can work against Republicans just as easily.”20 There is anecdotal evidence that the minority party advantage does allow minority party candidates to win elections that they otherwise would have lost had their party affiliations been listed on the ballot.21
In addition to questions about the quality of voting and representation, it is not obvious that we want partisanship to be removed from the local level.
Sure, maybe issues such as abortion or the war in Iraq have no relevance for local government, but the notion that partisanship does not matter at the local level is short sighted. There may not be a Democratic or Republican way to fill a pothole, but there are certainly differences of opinion between the two par- ties on how many and whose potholes are going to be filled. If partisanship did not matter at the local level, then people would not care about the party affiliation of the mayor or whether the city council was comprised of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, or whatever. However, it is my experience that most people do care about such things. If you are a Republican, you would likely much rather have a Republican mayor than a Democratic one, and vice versa for Democrats. If this is the case, then partisanship must matter at the local level. For offices where it is less clear how partisanship plays a role, say the coroner or public weigher, as noted in Chapter 3, we should not be electing these positions anyway. The intentions of the progressives to cripple the party machines by instituting nonpartisan elections may have been noble, but the machines have either been destroyed or severely wounded, with no sign of returning to the power they had in their heyday, and we are left with a host of negative consequences. In other words, in this case the progressives’ attempt to strengthen democracy only ended up weakening it.
A candidate’s party affiliation is not the only information that is available (or not) on the ballot. California, for example, lists each candidate’s occupation