Already the analyses of the results
in New York’s special election are starting to pile up. And certainly, given the
quirkiness of this race, on several levels, there will be many different
explanations of why the Democrat, Bill Owens won and why the Conservative Party
candidate Doug Hoffman lost. But part of the explanation could lie with several
peculiarities in the New York State voting ballot.? Typically in New York
State there are as many as a half dozen, or more parties on the ballot. In this
case there were 5: Democrat, Republican, Independence, Conservative, and
Working Families. Also, candidates can be cross-endorsed by political parties.
What this means is that a candidates name can appear on the same ballot more
than once. Indeed, in NYS it is not unusual for a candidate’s name to appear 2,
3, or even 4 times on the same ballot, on different party lines. The final
point is that the parties appear on the ballot according to how many votes they
received in the previous gubernatorial election.
So what might have been the
implications of this for the special Congressional election? As noted there
were 5 parties on the ballot. Officially, 2 of them endorsed Owens, the
Democratic Party and the Working Families Party; two of them endorsed Dede
Scozzafava, the Republican Party and the Independence Party, and one of them
endorsed Hoffman. This means that even though she dropped out of the race at
the last minute, Scozzafava?s name not only appeared twice on the ballot, but,
because the Independence Party drew more votes in the previous governor’s race
than the Conservative Party, her name appeared twice on the ballot before
anyone even saw Hoffman’s name. In other words, Hoffman’s name was four lines
down. Here is what the voter saw when he or she went in to the voting booth.

Democrat–Owens

Republican–Scozzafava

Independence–Scozzafava?

Conservative–Hoffman

Working Families–Owens?

My guess is that this
peculiarity alone could account for the fact that Scozzafava received over 5
percent of the vote, more than the margin of difference between Owens and
Hoffman.