Name order on ballots: important issue for Super Tuesday?

When watching post-NH primary coverage, one pundit cited as a partial reason why Obama may have lost a few votes was because his name was buried on the ballot. That is, when physically looking at a paper (or electronic) ballot in NH, voters had to scroll down a long list of Democratic candidates before finding his name. Hillary's name was the first name listed on the ballot. The argument is that by forcing voters to labor in order to find Obama's name on the ballot, a few undoubtedly give up and simply vote for their second choice.

Moving ahead to other voting primaries (such as SC and subsequent Super Tuesday states), has any person heard whether Obama's name is still buried on the ballots, or if it is listed near the top (where it should be for a mainstream candidate)?

It may actually matter. One of the problems in FL 2000 was misaligned names and ballot order, iirc.

Welcome to DU, Unsane! Great user name, btw. :hi:

I vote absentee, and Hillary's name is buried toward the bottom - Barack Obama is at the top. :shrug:

Welcome to DU! :hi:

And I'm not sure what's up with the order on my ballot - nothing alphabetical or otherwise. It appears totally random.

Interesting.

I'm in California and the top three were Clinton, Biden, then Obama :shrug:

Yes, then our ballot is totally different. Mine had Hillary second from the bottom, Edwards somewhere in the middle, and Obama first.

don't remember what came after that, since I voted for Obama.

Followed by Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, Dodd, and Biden. However, for the delegates, Clinton's are listed first, followed by Obama, and Richardson. No other candidates had delegate names on the ballot. (:shrug:)

If that voter crumbles under the pressure they probably shouldn't be voting anyway.

I'm not sure if it works the same in other states, in Texas though each ballot slot (the order) is determined in each county by a random 'draw' (actually drawing 'names' from a hat/box/whatever). It's not based on the alphabet or some 'perceived' frontrunner status. Here there are 254 counties.... that makes for a 'potentially' different order in each county.

Anyone have real information on how it works in other states?

So that the two or three percent bump that is claimed for the first on the ballot position id distributed arond the state.

In Texas, the county party does a drawing to determine ballot order. I drew on behalf of Chris Dodd and got him the number two spot.