Too pointless for the election board, I think.
New York probably has the most complicated election ballot in the US. You vote for the candidate, not the party, so a person can run on multiple election lines and all the votes are tallied together.
Thus there are five main parties. These are parties that received more than 50,000 votes in the previous gubernatorial election, listed in order of how they ranked in votes received. Thus, you have:
Democratic Party
Republican Party
**Conservative Party **(what it sounds like, except here in Schenectady, where it was taken over by the police and firemen’s unions; if you want the line, you have to make the unions happy).
**Working Families Parties **(a replacement for the old Liberal Party, which Andrew Cuomo put out of business a decade or so ago)
Independence Party (actually rather independent).
But, wait, there’s more. You can also file to run on any new party you want to form. Thus, in my town, there are
No New Tax Party
Rotterdam First Party
Lower Taxes Now! Party (yes, with an exclamation point).
Re-Unite Rotterdam Party
The last two don’t have their own ballot lines. There’s a rule that if you have two ballot lines with one of the official parties, you cannot have an extra line for a new party. I think this had to do with the state’s adaptation of the optical scan ballots; in the old voting machines, you could have multiple lines with your own name. The rule keeps the ballot from getting even bigger than it already it.
This leads to one candidate for the No New Tax Party not listed on the line for that party, since he’s endorsed by two of the official parties.
For supervisor, we have eight parties listed. For three candidates: one Republican (on Republican and New Tax Party), one Democrat (four ballot lines), and the current supervisor (Rotterdam First – he’s a Democrat who everyone wanted out).
What looks like a four-party race for Family Court Judge is, upon closer inspection, a single candidate with four endorsements.
There are four candidates for county legislature, with a total of 14 parties for all of them.
Is there this sort of thing in other states?