Democrats have been fighting GOP attempts to sabotage voting rights on a number of fronts, from gerrymandering to voter suppression to felony disenfranchisement.
Now, they have set their sights on a new kind of unfair voting law: ballot ordering requirements.
This weekend, a federal judge struck down a law in Florida that requires the candidates from the governor's party to appear first on the ballot — a law that has been on the books for 70 years under members of both parties, but, since Florida's governorship has mainly been under Republican control for the previous two decades, has consistently given a slight advantage to the GOP.
This leads to a problem known as "position bias" or "donkey voting," where a small portion of voters are more likely to vote for the candidate who appears first, all else equal, which Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias argued gives Florida Republicans a 5 percent partisan advantage. A federal judge agreed, ruling that President Donald Trump cannot automatically appear first on every Florida ballot.
With their victory in Florida, Democratic groups are now looking to challenge ballot-ordering laws in multiple other states, including Arizona, Georgia, and Texas:
