GOP challenger for Salt Lake County clerk calls for ballot randomization

SALT LAKE COUNTY — As the political affiliation of the county clerk goes, so goes that ballot.

The order in which most candidate names appear on a ballot in Utah is determined by the political party of that county's clerk. If he or she is a Republican, then Republican candidate names appear first, above their Democratic challengers.

Jeremy Votaw is the Republican challenger to 19-year-incumbent Democrat Sherri Swensen for Salt Lake County clerk. If elected in November he plans to implement "ballot randomization" — a process in which the name at the top of the ballot is randomly selected.

"It's something I've really been adamant about," Votaw said.

Referencing studies compiled by the University of Virginia Center for Politics (www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/ljs2009081305/), Votaw said that the name at the top of a ballot is 3-5 percent more likely to win than candidates lower on the ballot. Votaw said the current system is unfair, especially when voters are unfamiliar with the candidates.

"When you get into these secondary races … a lot of people will just pick whatever name is on top," he said. "Elections at their very core should be fair."

Swensen said she had similar aspirations when she first ran for office in 1991. Soon after getting on the job, Swensen brought the topic up at one of her first County Clerk meetings, "and they just looked and me," she said. "I quickly realized that it's very expensive."

The expense comes from the research, legal work, and testing and updating thousands of voting machines. What's more, there are still tens of thousand of paper ballots filled out each election in Salt Lake County.

Some 80,000 people vote by mail in Swensen's county, plus there are thousands of provisional ballots turned in by voters who failed to register after moving within the state. With all the different boundaries — school districts that elect boards of education, state legislature districts, national congressional districts, etc. — there are more than 200 ballot styles issued in Salt Lake County. To create even more ballots just so names appear in a different order would be logistically challenging.

A more compelling case than the price tag was the lack of credibility in the studies calling for randomization in her day, Swensen said. They were conducted at universities where students were given ballots with fictional names and parties, and told to vote for one of the fake candidates. While the name on top may have gotten more votes, it wasn't a real person tied to a real party, which are things real voters care about.