ABSTRACT
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 offi ces people should elect affect voters before they step into the voting booth. Once in the booth, other questions arise that infl uence the quality of democracy. Who should be listed on the ballot? In what order should those people be listed? What information about the candidates should voters have available to them on the ballot? Should we know a candidate’s partisan affi liation? 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 infl uence 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 fi rst 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 affi liation 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 fi rst, 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.
