Each county holds a lottery of sorts and then chooses which letter goes first. Then there is a second lottery to see which second letter in a name gets priority.
In other words DE could come before DA but after DO.
And in each of the 58 counties there will be a different order.
I think the election will be won or lost in Alpine County.
http://www.co.alpine.ca.us/
Check out the list of candidate names from Mehitabel’s link. I especially like ‘Craig “Tax Freeze” Freis’ on page 1 and ‘Ralph S. “Rotten” Sherwood’ on page 7. 
Craig “Tax Freeze” Freis is on the ballot for some office statewide pretty much all the time.
He had “Tax Freeze” legally added to his name.
Uh-huh. :eek:
Thanks for the answer. I guess this’ll stop illiterate voters from being told to choose the “third guy down in the second column” or whatever.
Alpine County will be the one with hanging chads, I bet.
There was a mayoral election in Compton that had its result changed once or twice (I lost count) because one of the candidates made a persuasive argument to a judge that he lost only because the other guy was incorrectly listed first.
I forget the utlimate outcome and if it’s like typical Compton politics, they will still be arguing about 20 years from now.
I think when you vote in Alpine County, the registrar (Fred) comes up to the registered voter (Al) and just asks him.
I see that
Ahem, trying again
I see that today AP is listing the number of candidates as 130, meanwhile the California Secretary of State is listing the number is as 55.
The wierd statistics continue.
Even more interesting is, according to your link, there are 100 people “under review”.
The LA Times said that 158 people overall filed (the paper requires registration to view online though).