The 2019 ballot order

Time once again for this risible ceremony.

The order of the November Houston ballot was set Friday morning in a random drawing at City Hall, laying out how the candidates for mayor, controller and city council will appear when voters cast their ballots this fall.

Here is the order of the 12-candidate field for mayor, as it will appear on the ballot:

  • Demetria Smith
  • Naoufal Houjami
  • Victoria Romero
  • Roy J. Vasquez
  • Kendall Baker
  • Derrick Broze
  • Sue Lovell
  • Bill King
  • Sylvester Turner
  • Tony Buzbee
  • Dwight A. Boykins
  • Johnny “J.T.” Taylor

Though candidates listed atop the ballot traditionally receive a slight bump, the leading candidates for mayor this year are clustered together near the bottom, appearing to deny anyone a major advantage in the order.

The order for all of the Houston elections can be seen here. The ballot order for other elections, such as for HISD and HCC, are set by the entities that run those elections.

This is the time when I put on my Grumpy Old Man hat, hitch up my Grumpy Old Man pants, and complain for the umpty-umpth time about the whole “drawing for ballot position” thing. We are in the year of our Lord two thousand and nineteen. We have been using electronic doohickies to conduct our elections for almost two decades. Why in the name of Ada Lovelace have we not made it a requirement to have those electronic election doohickies randomize the order of candidates for each individual voter? The idea that there could be even a tiny advantage to the candidate who through the luck of the draw gets to have their name first on the ballot is an utter abomination, one that could be resolved by one line of code in the programming of those electronic voting doohickies. Why oh Lord why can we not do this?

(The answer to my overwrought rhetorical question is almost certainly “because state law doesn’t allow it”, and to be fair the people who have a genuine, good faith interest in conducting better and fairer elections have much bigger fish to fry than this pet issue of mine. That said, there’s nothing at all partisan in what I am once again bitching about. I would like to think that a bill that mandated random ballot order, to be implemented as each vote-conducting entity upgrades its current voting machines, or by some deadline ten or so years in the future, would not draw strong opposition. Maybe someday, someone will take up my admittedly small-bore cause. Until then, I look forward to whining about this again early next year, when the ballot order for the 2020 primary races is established.)

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One Response to The 2019 ballot order

  1. mollusk says:

    Spot on. Without Ada Lovelace, we may have never made it to the moon.

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