Thursday, December 24, 2009

Randomizing the Ballot Order


"The Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine has ruled in favor of the Central Election Commission and reversed a decision of the Kyiv Administration Court of Appeals that prohibited the CEC from placing numbers next to presidential candidates' names on the ballot."

In fact, the focus here is likely on the wrong thing - rather than whether the number is made explicit, it seems the place itself is important - with candidates being higher up, receiving more votes - one solution is to randomize the order of candidates on the ballot, instead of using an alphabetic ordering.

There is quite some research on the effect of ballot order on voting outcomes, for example

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