Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-sh8wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T11:01:48.277Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Alphabetically Ordered Ballots and the Composition of American Legislatures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Barry C. Edwards
Barry C. Edwards*
Affiliation:
University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
*
Barry C. Edwards, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, 4297 Andromeda Loop N. Howard Phillips Hall, Rm. 311A, Orlando, FL 32816, USA. Email: barry.edwards@ucf.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although research demonstrates that favorable ballot position can deliver candidates a small windfall of votes in local, nonpartisan, and primary elections, it is not clear whether ballot order laws have had any impact on the composition of U.S. legislatures. In this article, I estimate the substantive significance of ballot order rules by comparing the legislators of states that alphabetically order ballots to those elected by states that randomize or rotate ballot order. I also compare legislators elected by states that started or stopped alphabetically ordering ballots in recent decades. I find that states that alphabetically order ballots disproportionately elect candidates with early alphabet surnames. My research challenges the prevailing belief that ballot order affects only minor elections and suggests that seemingly innocuous rules have altered our political landscape. I conclude that arbitrary ballot ordering rules should be reformed to remedy their substantial impact on political representation.

Keywords

electoral systemsrepresentationelectionselection rulespolitical behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 171 - 191
Copyright
The Author(s) 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abakoumkin, Georgios. 2011. “Forming Choice Preferences the Easy Way: Order and Familiarity Effects in Elections.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 41 (11): 2689–707..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrahamse, Allan F., Morrison, Peter A., and Bolton, Nancy Minter. 1994. “Surname Analysis for Estimating Local Concentration of Hispanics and Asians.” Population Research and Policy Review 13 (4): 383–98..doi:10.1007/BF01084115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agresti, Alan, and Finlay, Barbara. 2009. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.Google Scholar
Alvarez, R. Michael, Sinclair, Betsy, and Hasen, Richard L.. 2006. “How Much Is Enough? The ‘Ballot Order Effect’ and the Use of Social Science Research in Election Law Disputes.” Election Law Journal 5 (1): 40–56..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bagley, Christopher R. 1965. “Does Candidate's Position on the Ballot Paper Influence Voter Choice—A Study of the 1959 and 1964 British General Elections.” Parliamentary Affairs 19 (2): 162–74..Google Scholar
Bain, Henry M., and Hecock, Donald S.. 1957. Ballot Position and Voter's Choice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Barnsley, Roger H., Thompson, A. H., and Legault, Philipe. 1992. “Family Planning: Football Style. The Relative Age Effect in Football.” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 27 (1): 77–87..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnsley, Roger H., Thompson, Alan H., and Barnsley, Paula E.. 1985. “Hockey Success and Birthdate: The Relative Age Effect.” Journal of the Canadian Association of Health, Physical Education and Recreation 51:23–28.Google Scholar
Barnsley, Roger H., and Thompson, Angus H.. 1988. “Birthdate and Success in Minor Hockey: The Key to the NHL.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science 20 (2): 167–76..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beazley, Mary Beth. 2013. “Ballot Design as Fail-Safe: An Ounce of Rotation Is Worth a Pound of Litigation.” Election Law Journal 12 (1): 18–52..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bedard, Kelly, and Dhuey, Elizabeth. 2006. “The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of Long-Run Age Effects.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (4): 1437–72..Google Scholar
Brockington, David. 2003. “A Low Information Theory of Ballot Position Effect.” Political Behavior 25 (1): 1–27..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brook, D., and Upton, G.. 1974. “Biases in Local Government Elections Due to Position on the Ballot Paper.” Applied Statistics 23 (3): 414–9..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, Robert C. 1921. “Voters' Vagaries: The Value of Position on a Ballot.” National Municipal Review 10 (3): 161–5..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, Gary C., and Kristian Pueschel, J.. 1974. “But Who Should I Vote for for County Coroner?” The Journal of Politics 36 (03): 778–84..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Childers, Terry L., and Skinner, Steven J 1979. “Gaining Respondent Cooperation in Mail Surveys through Prior Commitment.” Public Opinion Quarterly 43 (4): 558–61..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conover, William Jay. 1999. Practical Nonparametric Statistics, 3rd Edition. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Darcy, Robert. 1986. “Position Effects with Party Column Ballots.” The Western Political Quarterly 39 (4): 648–62..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darcy, Robert. 1998. “Position Effects in Multimember Districts: The New Hampshire House of Representatives, 1972-1994.” Polity 30 (4): 691–703..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dhuey, Elizabeth, and Lipscomb, Stephen. 2008. “What Makes a Leader? Relative Age and High School Leadership.” Economics of Education Review 27 (2): 173–83..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Edwards, Barry C. 2013. “Formulating Voting Rights Act Remedies to Address Current Conditions.” American Politics Research. doi:10.1177/1532673X13499624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, Barry C. 2014. “Race, Ethnicity, and Alphabetically Ordered Ballots.” Election Law Journal 13 (3): 394–404..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Marc N., Morrison, Peter A., Fremont, Allen, McCaffrey, Daniel F., Pantoja, Philip, and Lurie, Nicole. 2009. “Using the Census Bureau's Surname List to Improve Estimates of Race/Ethnicity and Associated Disparities.” Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology 9 (2): 69–83..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garnham, David. 1976. “Dyadic International War 1816-1965: The Role of Power Parity and Geographical Proximity.” The Western Political Quarterly 29 (2): 231–42..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillie, Paul. 1989. “A Short Popular History of Vermont Elections.” In Vermont Elections, 1789-1989, ed. Carter, Christie. Montpelier, VT: Vermont Secretary of State: 39-43.Google Scholar
Gladwell, Malcolm. 2008. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Grofman, Bernard, and Garcia, Jennifer R.. 2014. “Using Spanish Surname to Estimate Hispanic Voting Population in Voting Rights Litigation: A Model of Context Effects Using Bayes' Theorem.” Election Law Journal 13 (3): 375–93.. doi:10.1089/elj.2013.0190.Google Scholar
Helsen, Werner F., Winckel, Jan Van, and Mark Williams, A.. 2005. “The Relative Age Effect in Youth Soccer across Europe.” Journal of Sports Sciences 23 (6): 629–36..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hillygus, D. Sunshine, Nie, Norman H., Prewitt, Kenneth, and Pals, Heili. 2006. The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel E., and Imai, Kosuke. 2006. “Randomization Inference with Natural Experiments: An Analysis of Ballot Effects in the 2003 California Recall Election.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 101 (475): 888–900..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Daniel E., and Imai, Kosuke. 2008. “Estimating Causal Effects of Ballot Order from a Randomized Natural Experiment: The California Alphabet Lottery, 1978–2002.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72 (2): 216–40..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 1989. “Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of US House Elections, 1946-86.” American Political Science Review 83 (3): 773–93..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Andrew J., and Miles, Chris. 2011. “Order Effects of Ballot Position without Information-Induced Confirmatory Bias.” British Politics 6 (4): 479–90..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keele, Luke, McConnaughy, Corrine, and White, Ismail. 2012. “Strengthening the Experimenter's Toolbox: Statistical Estimation of Internal Validity.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (2): 484–99..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelley, Jonathan, and McAllister, Ian. 1984. “Ballot Paper Cues and the Vote in Australia and Britain: Alphabetic Voting, Sex, and Title.” Public Opinion Quarterly 48 (2): 452–66..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klarner, Carl, Berry, William D., Carsey, Thomas M., Jewell, Malcolm, Niemi, Richard G., Powell, Lynda W., and Snyder, James M.. 2013. State Legislative Election Returns, 1967–2010. Edited by University of North Carolina. Ann Arbor: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Koppell, Jonathan G. S., and Steen, Jennifer A.. 2004. “The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcomes.” The Journal of Politics 66 (1): 267–81..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krebs, Timothy B. 2001. “Political Experience and Fundraising in City Council Elections.” Social Science Quarterly 82 (3): 536–51..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krosnick, Jon A. 1991. “Response Strategies for Coping with the Cognitive Demands of Attitude Measures in Surveys.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 5 (3): 213–36..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krosnick, Jon A., Miller, Joanne, and Tichy, Michael. 2004. “An Unrecognized Need for Ballot Reform: The Effects of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes.” In Rethinking the Vote: The Politics and Prospects of American Election Reform, eds. Just, M., Crigler, A., and McCaffery, E.. New York: Oxford University Press: 51–73.Google Scholar
Lijphart, Arend, and Pintor, Rafael Lopez. 1988. “Alphabetic Bias in Partisan Elections: Patterns of Voting for the Spanish Senate, 1982 and 1986.” Electoral Studies 7 (3): 225–31..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur, and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lupia, Arthur, McCubbins, Mathew D., and Popkin, Samuel L.. 2000. Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutz, Georg. 2010. “First Come, First Served: The Effect of Ballot Position on Electoral Success in Open Ballot PR Elections.” Representation 46 (2): 167–81..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackerras, Malcolm. 1968. “The ‘Donkey Vote.‘” The Australian Quarterly 40 (4): 89–92..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcinkiewicz, Kamil. 2014. “Electoral Contexts that Assist Voter Coordination: Ballot Position Effects in Poland.” Electoral Studies 33:322–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, David R. 2004. Congress: The Electoral Connection. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
McKibbin, Carroll. 1997. Roster of United States Congressional Officeholders and Biographical Characteristics of Members of the United States Congress, 1789–1996: Merged Data. Ann Arbor: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Meredith, Marc, and Salant, Yuval. 2013. “On the Causes and Consequences of Ballot Order Effects.” Political Behavior 35 (1): 175–97..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Joanne M., and Krosnick, Jon A.. 1998. “The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes.” Public Opinion Quarterly 62:291–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Laura. 2010. “Election by Lottery: Ballot Order, Equal Protection, and the Irrational Voter.” New York University Journal of Legislation & Public Policy 13:373–405.Google Scholar
Montjoy, Robert S. 2010. “The Changing Nature . . . and Costs . . . of Election Administration.” Public Administration Review 70 (6): 867–75..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, Robert O., Wei, Iris I., and Virnig, Beth A.. 2004. “Improving Identification of Hispanic Males in Medicare: Use of Surname Matching.” Medical Care 42 (8): 810–6..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mueller, John E. 1969. “Voting on the Propositions: Ballot Patterns and Historical Trends in California.” American Political Science Review 63 (4): 1197–212..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, John E. 1970. “Choosing among 133 Candidates.” Public Opinion Quarterly 34 (3): 395–402..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riker, William H., and Ordeshook, Peter C.. 1968. “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting.” American Political Science Review 62 (1): 25–42..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robson, Christopher, and Walsh, Brendan. 1974. “The Importance of Positional Voting Bias in the Irish General Election of 1973.” Political Studies 22 (2): 191–203..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salant, Yuval. 2011. “Procedural Analysis of Choice Rules with Applications to Bounded Rationality.” The American Economic Review 101:724–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, W. James Jr. 1972. “California Ballot Position Statutes: An Unconstitutional Advantage to Incumbents.” Southern California Law Review 45:365–98.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Tetlock, Phillip E., and Brody, Richard A.. 1993. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Angus H., Barnsley, Roger H., and Stebelsky, George. 1991. “Born to Play Ball” The Relative Age Effect and Major League Baseball.” Sociology of Sport Journal 8:146–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taebel, Delbert A. 1975. “The Effect of Ballot Position on Electoral Success.” American Journal of Political Science 19 (3): 519–26..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Economist. 2001. “As Easy as ZYX: It Is Time to Stand up for the Alphabetically Disadvantaged.” August 30. Accessed Februray 17 2015 from http://www.economist.com/node/760345.Google Scholar
Upton, Graham J. G., and Brook, D.. 1974. “The Importance of Positional Voting Bias in British Elections.” Political Studies 22 (2): 178–90..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dunk, Emily. 1997. “Challenger Quality in State legislative Elections.” Political Research Quarterly 50 (4): 793–807..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volcansek, Mary L. 1981. “An Exploration of the Judicial Election Process.” The Western Political Quarterly 34:572–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webber, Richard, Rallings, Colin, Borisyuk, Galina, and Thrasher, Michael. 2014. “Ballot Order Positional Effects in British Local Elections, 1973–2011.” Parliamentary Affairs 67 (1): 119–36..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1910. “Hide-and-Seek Politics.” North American Review 191 (654): 585–601..Google Scholar
Word, David L., Coleman, Charles D., Nunziata, Robert, and Kominski, Robert. 2008. Demographic Aspects of Surnames from Census 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.Google Scholar