The order of names on the ballot is determined by state law, and every state picks its own method. The common approaches are alphabetical order, a randomized alphabet that starts from a drawn letter, a public random drawing, filing order, incumbency priority, and rotation across precincts so no one candidate stays at the top everywhere. Many states blend methods depending on whether the race is a primary, a partisan general election, or a nonpartisan contest.
The Main Methods States Use
Five approaches cover most of what you’ll find on a U.S. ballot.
- Alphabetical order. Candidates are listed by last name, A to Z. It’s simple to administer and permanently favors candidates with early-alphabet surnames.
- Randomized alphabet. Officials draw a letter at random, and that letter becomes the starting point. A draw of “M” puts candidates whose last names start with M first, then N, O, and so on through L.
- Random drawing or lottery. Names or numbers are pulled from a container to assign positions. Drawings are typically held in public, and candidates or their representatives can attend.
- Filing order. Whoever files their paperwork earliest gets listed higher. This rewards early organization and often produces a scramble on the first day of the filing period.
- Incumbency priority. The current officeholder is listed first. This method has faced repeated legal challenges and has been struck down in several federal decisions.
No single method dominates nationally. The choice reflects each state’s judgment about fairness, administrative simplicity, and how much weight to give the well-documented advantage of appearing at the top.
Rotation Across Precincts
A smaller group of states, roughly a dozen in partisan races, rotates candidate names so each candidate appears first on a roughly equal share of ballots. In a five-candidate race, officials print five versions of the ballot. One version starts with Candidate A, the next with Candidate B, and so on. The versions are distributed across precincts, counties, or legislative districts so that no single ordering reaches every voter.
Some states rotate in a simple cycle: the candidate on top in one precinct drops to the bottom in the next, and everyone else moves up a slot. Others use more elaborate shuffling so the same two candidates don’t sit next to each other on most versions. The tradeoff is cost and complexity. Printing multiple versions, training poll workers on which version goes where, and configuring tabulation to handle different layouts all add work and add room for error. States that don’t rotate have generally decided the logistical burden isn’t worth it.
How Party Order Works in General Elections
In partisan general elections, many states first order candidates by party, and every candidate of the party listed first gets the top slot in their race. The most common tiebreaker is prior election performance: whichever party’s candidate won the most votes in the last gubernatorial election gets top billing next time. Some states key it to the last presidential race or the secretary of state race instead. Others list parties alphabetically, which in practice puts Democrats above Republicans almost every time. A few states draw party order at random. States also typically separate “major” and “minor” parties based on vote thresholds from earlier elections, grouping majors at the top and minors or independents below them.
The individual candidate’s position within a party’s column is then set by whatever candidate-ordering method the state uses, so a general election ballot often reflects two layered decisions: which party goes first, and how each party’s own list is arranged.
Primaries and Nonpartisan Races
Primary elections take party ordering off the table because every candidate on a given primary ballot belongs to the same party. States typically default to alphabetical order, a random drawing, or rotation within the party’s list. Public lottery drawings are common, sometimes held within days of the filing deadline. If a primary leads to a runoff, some states carry the original order forward rather than drawing again.
Nonpartisan races — judicial seats, school boards, many municipal offices — strip party labels out entirely and usually fall back on alphabetical order or a random drawing. These are also the races where position matters most, because voters typically know the least about the candidates.
Why the Method Matters
Researchers call the advantage of appearing first the “primacy effect,” and decades of election data show it’s real. Studies of California elections found that candidates listed first in primaries picked up roughly one to three percentage points, and first-listed candidates in nonpartisan general elections gained about two to three points. Minor-party candidates sometimes doubled their share simply by being at the top. The effect is strongest in low-information races and shrinks in high-profile contests, but it doesn’t disappear. One analysis of the 2000 presidential election estimated a boost of several percentage points in certain states from first position alone.
Legal Limits on What States Can Do
Federal courts evaluate ballot-order rules under the Anderson-Burdick balancing test, which weighs the burden a rule places on voters and candidates against the state’s reason for it. Randomization and rotation systems are generally considered constitutionally safe because any positional advantage is spread evenly. Fixed systems that consistently benefit the same party or candidate type face the greatest legal risk, particularly when the state can offer no neutral justification beyond administrative convenience.
Incumbent-first ordering has fared the worst. A 1969 federal district court decision, affirmed by the Supreme Court, found an incumbent-favoring ballot order violated the Fourteenth Amendment right to fair and evenhanded treatment. The Eighth Circuit reached the same conclusion in 1980, and the Seventh Circuit struck down a policy that gave the incumbent party’s candidates first position as an equal protection violation. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit addressed a challenge to Arizona’s statute ordering candidates by party affiliation and confirmed that ballot-order disputes are justiciable under Anderson-Burdick, recognizing that position bias is real and that party-keyed ordering can raise First and Fourteenth Amendment concerns.1Justia Case Law. Brian Mecinas v. Katie Hobbs
Not every challenge wins. Courts give states substantial leeway to run their elections, and an ordering method that imposes only a modest burden needs only a reasonable justification to survive. To find the exact rule that applies to a given race, the state’s secretary of state or board of elections publishes the governing statute along with the schedule for any drawings and whether candidates may observe.