The backside of the ballot

[arkuat]

WHY does Minnesota bother to require printing all the UNCONTESTED judicial elections on the ballot? What conceivable good does this do anyone?

It would make sense if they actually counted write-in votes, but I learned recently that Minnesota does not count write-in votes unless requested to do so by the particular write-in candidate, and that they only count write-in votes for candidates who have formally requested such counting.

I happen to know (I used to be one of them, but that's not the only reason) that there are a lot of people out there who are afraid their ballots will be discarded, and all of their votes ignored, if they don't vote in every single contest on the ballot. I happen to know now that's not the case (at least not in Minnesota), but I remember the time I wasted trying to research these useless votes in uncontested races where the press published practically nothing about the candidates in these races. Multiply that by all the other poor souls who haven't discovered Naomi Kritzer yet! And no, Naomi doesn't bother researching these contests that have no effect on anything either. It would be a waste of everyone's time.

Comments

[dreamshark]

Good question. I didn't know that write-in votes are usually not counted, which pretty much removes the only reason to list them.

[quility]

I had always worried my ballot wouldn't be counted if I didn't vote for everything. Thank you for passing that along. :)

[arkuat]

Glad to help! I wish I had learned it earlier than I did. And I'd be surprised if there isn't somewhere on the planet, perhaps several places, where they do throw away ballots that are incomplete. Election rules vary widely.

[pameladean]

I knew I didn't have to fill those out, but I still got a shock when I first turned over the ballot, until I saw there was only one actual race and I recognized the names (thanks, Naomi).

I can only surmise that they think it's important or may be important for some races that the write-in candidate be able to find out how many votes they got.

I don't mind their printing all the people running unopposed; but they don't do a great job of letting voters know that they don't have to fill in all those bubbles.

P.

[redbird]

I suspect that's one of the things that they don't tell you because they know it, the people they're talking to regularly know it, and they forget that we didn't all learn it from our parents or our grade school teachers. I hadn't realized that people thought they had to vote on everything for it to count, because my parents were active in local politics when I was growing up, so I heard quite a few conversations about how many more people vote for president than for congress, and how many more vote for mayor than for judges.

I got to the bottom of the Massachusetts ballot this year, saw that we had a question 3 that was labeled as "non-binding," and commented that I don't trust "non-binding" referenda given Brexit, so stopped and thought about it. Our question 3 is a motherhood-and-apple-pie version of "we should move to renewables, and create jobs" and isn't even in the official state ballot guide.

This year I think I abstained from one ballot question because I'm honestly not sure if the law in question would be a good idea.

[arkuat]

Your surmise is sensible, but the ways we've changed the rules since first establishing the tradition of putting unopposed judges on the ballot has taken just about all of the point out of it. I wonder if Jonathan has an opinion about this.

[lcohen]

in illinois, not voting for a candidate is counted as a "no" vote so i use not voting for an uncontested candidate as a way to say "not them." this is more useful for judges, i think.

[arkuat]

That's the way I voted in that (one, I think? I learned the futility quickly) election in which I tried to research the unopposed incumbent judges so as to decide which to grant and which to withhold my vote from.

It's so vastly much less important than every other office on the ballot, perhaps especially the most-local other offices, that right now it strikes me as a minor and weak but particularly offensive form of vote suppression (by piling on additional unnecessary mental and emotional labor in the act of voting).

ETA: I have never voted in Illinois. When I lived there I was too young to vote, so I'm only saying that I found it futile in Minnesota sometime in the 21st c.

[bibliofile]

Well it used to be that recording all the write-in names was a thing, in Chicago and in Wisconsin. During a big election, that was a lot of work for two pollworkers (out of six or ten or whatever) at the end of a very long day. But if the slot isn't on the ballot, no one can write anything in, right?

(I did hear, a long time ago, that some researchers did go and look at the write-in names, [waves hand vaguely] to try to gain insight into the moods of the voters. The times I had that task on election day, there were the predictable ("none of the above," "my mom"), the inscrutable (names that no one recognized), and the annoying ("does anyone really read this?"). A mixed bag, but we did it because we followed the rules.

In the last ten years or so, Wisconsin changed the rules and gave up on all that nonsense. Now, anyone running as a write-in candidate has to let the elections folks know ahead of time, and the poll workers record only the votes for those specific people.)

[arkuat]

Yeah, Minnesota probably went through a similar process, but ten years ago I knew a lot less about what Minnesota's electoral law was like then because I had been voting in California for years at that point.

The main thing I want to appreciate about what California and Minnesota have in common with one another in electoral law, is that every election I have ever voted in in either state used hand-marked paper ballots. I think that's the way to go right now, with ballot-marking devices provided for those who request them.

[arkuat]

It's that time of year again! Once again I have my absentee ballot in hand to study, and on one side there are a whole bunch of competitions for electoral office that I've already made up my mind about, and on the other side, a whole bunch of like competitions that I don't care about (because a dangerous Republican woman isn't campaigning to get onto the Minnesota Supreme Court this time)

And you know, every time I use the word Republican in that political sense, being a Usofian myself, I make fun of myself for every complaint I ever had about trying to make sense of Irish history. Ireland and Usofia have a pretty close relationship with one another, as nations go, but the way each of us uses the word "Republican?" Like, totes opposites.