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Alabama’s recent hotly contested special U.S. Senate election was marred by considerable ballot confusion caused by the state’s straight party voting ballot which allowed voters two ways to vote for the two candidates. The election which Democrat Doug Jones won by 22,000 votes is still under the shadow of a possible recount request from his Republican opponent Roy Moore.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights group overseeing the election, said 300 voters had “contacted them to report a range of difficulties” through “a voter protection hotline throughout the day” as of early Tuesday evening including confusion over the ballot design.
Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, said “voters were … confused about ‘straight ticket’ voting” reference on the ballot “that lets people choose all the candidates from a single party by simply checking one box. According to Clarke, voters wanted to know what would happen if they checked the box for one party, but then also wanted to vote for another party’s candidate in one race.”
The special election ballot design was especially confusing in this election as there was only one partisan race on the ballot. This gave voters two ways to support their candidate in the contest. On top of the ballot was a straight party preference ballot option for the two major parties and right under it were the names of the two U.S. Senate candidates with their party labels plus a write-in option.