While last year’s presidential election is still being debated, this next year’s election is almost upon us. As Michael Pope reports, candidates for state office are arguing about who gets their name at the top of the ballot.
This year’s Republican primary isn’t like the Guns N Roses reunion tour. Candidates can’t camp out overnight to get the best seats in the house. And yet that happened this year, when supporters of two Republican candidates braved the cold overnight thinking if they were first in line, they’d get top billing on the ballot. Later they found out, that’s not how it works. Quentin Kidd is a professor at Christopher Newport University.
“Corey Stewart’s campaign is essentially banking on this idea that in a low-turnout primary any benefit he can get he should take and if he can get his name first on the ballot that’s going to help, that’s going to matter.”
But, says Kidd, it won’t matter whose name is first because voters in the June primary will be high-information voters. They’ll already know who their candidate is.
“If they’re going to vote for Ed Gillespie or they’re going to vote for Frank Wagner, then they’ll go to Ed Gillespie or Frank Wagner’s name and tick that box. I don’t think there are going to be many low-information voters who say I don’t know who to vote for so I’m going to select that first name.”
And so how IS it determined who gets their name at the top? Election officials say all candidates who turned in their paperwork by noon of the first day now have an equal shot at being first when they conduct a public drawing this week.
