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Ballot design bill awaits Fitial’s signature
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Posted on Mar 29 2006
The 15th Legislature has passed a bill that would retain the ballot design used in the 2005 general election.
House Bill 15-28, which now awaits action by Gov. Benigno R. Fitial, would reverse a law enacted only six months ago. The bill seeks to undo Public Law 14-87, which itself had overturned the Commonwealth Election Commission’s amendment to election regulations concerning ballot design.
Pursuant to the amended regulation, the 2005 ballot did away with the old columnar format where candidates of a political party were listed consecutively with all the other candidates of the same party. Rather, the 2005 ballot listed the candidates with other candidates running for the same position.
However, P.L. 14-87 required the Election Commission to reinstate the old party-based format effective the 2007 midterm election.
The commission opposed this, saying that the new ballot design significantly reduced the number of spoiled votes in the November 2005 election.
H.B. 15-28 reflects the commission’s position.
Authored by Rep. Justo S. Quitugua, the bill notes that valid votes increased substantially in the 2005 election, compared with the 2003 election. This is particularly true in races where there are multiple seats available—and where “overvotes” are very common.
An overvote occurs when a voter picks more candidates than there are available positions in a race. When this happens, all of the votes are considered invalid and are not counted.
“The Legislature…finds that it is in the best interest of the public to follow the ballot design used in the 2005 general election because it promotes less confusion and results in greater percentage of valid votes,” reads a portion of the bill.
