Any info about ballot placement? e.g. Kerry 1, Bush 2 or vice versa?

[k8conant]

I wonder if anyone has correlated election results with the position of the candidates on the ballot. In other words, if Bush is listed first did he have a significant advantage? Also, in reports of touchscreen "calibration" problems where people voted for Kerry and the machine showed a vote for Bush, was Bush first and Kerry second?

I found accounts of problems in previous elections: (NB: these shifts were from Republican to Democrat)

http://www.ballotpaper.org/archives/000240.html

• The case of the "Jumping X"
  
  Maryland - November 5, 2002
  Voters watched as they voted for the Republican candidate for governor and the ‘X’ appeared beside the name of the Democratic candidate. The machines used were Diebold DREs with no paper ballot so the machines could not be audited. “I pushed a Republican ticket for governor and his name disappeared,” said Kevin West of Upper Marlboro. “Then the Democrat’s name got an ‘X’ put in it.”
  (Source: The Washington Times, 6 November 2002; “Glitches cited at some polls….”)
  
  
  Fairfax County, Virginia - November 4, 2003
  
  Some voters watched as the ‘X’ they put beside the name of Republican School Board Member, Rita Thompson, dimmed out and moved to her Democratic opponent. Ms. Thompson complained and one machine was tested. Surprised officials watched as the machine changed approximately 1 out of 100 votes for Ms. Thompson to votes for her opponent.
  
  The machines used were Advanced Voting Solutions WINvote DREs that had just been purchased by the county as part of their move to become compliant with the new HAVA requirements. (Source: The Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2003; link)
  
  Notice the similarities in these two incidents. The machines were from different vendors, but in both cases the problems were of the same type; the vote would mysteriously change right in front of the voters eyes. Of course there were no paper ballots, so correct audits of the ballots could NOT be accomplished.
  
  Result: Fairfax County Republican Committee refers to the experience with the new election equipment as "a bitter disappointment - at best," calls for Voter-Verified Paper Ballot!

Tabulation of results electronically would probably be done with columns (for example, if Bush is first on the ballot, his tallies would be in the first column). It's increadibly easy in software to route votes to the wrong column either accidentally or on purpose.

:-( :kick:

[lonestarnot]

1. Therein lies the ANSWER!!!!!!!

Total fucking fraud!!!!!

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. I think the incumbent

usually gets to go first on the ballot.

[illflem]

3. Every state I've voted in the last 40 years

mixes them up, not every ballot is the same. Probably makes for more mistakes in electronic counting though.

[Dolphyn]

4. Yes indeed, more mistakes. See, for example:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/2/44647/2043

[mdb]

5. Not on candidates position on ballot but of ballot going to wrong machine

In Ohio you have one building with more than one precinct within this building. OK now you vote, and bring your ballot up to the machine to be counted.

Within this building they have a machine counting for one precinct and a machine counting for the other precinct. Here is the dirty part. You have each of these machines set up to tally the votes differently according to the difference in ballots. When you use the wrong machine to tally the vote the machine will read it wrong thus not counting as a presidential choice. As the video points out you would have thousands upon thousands of misread ballots.

This video on Democracy Now where co-host Juan Gonzalez talks exactly about this.

Here is the Democracy Now site with the video.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/03/164231

And here is the direct link to the video.
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/dec/video/dnB20041203a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=11:44.00

[AndrewClarke]

6. Ballot Access News had the ballot order for each state:

http://ballot-access.org/2004/11/01/order-of-presidential-candidates-on-the-ballot/#comments

According to the comment on the page, Alaska no longer rotates ballot order. The sample ballots on the Alaska state website have this order: Nader/Camejo, Cobb/LaMarche, Peroutka/Baldwin, Kerry/Edwards, Badnarik/Campagna, Bush/Cheney, Write-In.

This brings up another issue: In Alaska, write-in votes are not counted unless the candidate has filed a Letter of Intent with the Division of Elections. No candidate did so this year, so no write-in votes would be counted--yet there is a space on the ballot for write-ins.

It seems to me that if there is no way any write-ins will be counted, then there shouldn't be a space for write-ins on the ballot. The state should not make it easier for people to cast ballots that won't be counted.

Michigan's ballot was like that, too, even though there were no candidates with official write-in status.

[Hobbes199]

7. I've been asking about this too!

It would be soo simple to program the computer to just lean toward the incumbant slot (first position). Be very hard to prove this was biased specifically toward a candidate, and not just a mistake. I'm wondering if the states like Alaska where they lost the senate seats, if the Republican candidate was listed first, even if they weren't the incumbant.