My ballot came in the mail last week for the General Election. (I did not open it until this evening because of my trip to Little Rock.) I have to admit, there is a little rush in seeing my name on it.
(I was appointed to my village board [city council] to fulfil the remaining term of a board member who died while in office, in 2012. This will be the first time I stand for election, though it counts as a re-election.)
I am left puzzled by a few things below the orange return envelope.
In Nebraska, the voting rules were changed some years ago to allow voting precincts with low numbers of people to be mailed ballots rather than have polling stations. (It does not count as a poll tax as postage is not required to return the ballot.)
On the specious issue of in-person voter fraud raised in other states, that was not raised here. (I would argue that a polling station staffed by locals in a town of 128, voter impersonation fraud would be nigh-impossible.) The sole issue was the cost of setting up polling stations in tiny rural communities with little or no Internet access many miles from a city.
The ballot is a card for an optic scanner. It has two sides, one for Federal, state, and county offices, and the other for local offices and one state referendum (raising the minimum wage). As such, I am on the back.
I don't know how the order of candidates is ascertained for the ballot, but I do note that on the Federal, state, and county offices, they are always in order by party: Republican, Democratic, Libertarian. The only exception to that order is when a Democratic or Libertarian candidate is not running for a position (the Republicans are running candidates for all the seats on offer).
Every political party large and small argues for the need to run candidates for all positions. That is right and proper in my opinion: the more choices a voter has, the more differing opinions on positions that voter can weigh.
Nevertheless, there are only a few positions throughout the local ballot that are competitive (in that there is at least one more person running than the number of positions available).
Of all the positions, the only competitive ones are for US Senate, US Representative NE-3, state governor, attorney general, state auditor, and my village board. No local positions (county officials, natural resources districts, school board, county judges) are contested (except the aforementioned village board seats).
I find it noteworthy there are hardly any more Democratic Party candidates than there are Libertarian Party candidates for state and Federal offices. If you were not from the USA, you might think the Democrats were a minor party (or the Libertarians are of equal stature and popularity).
In local elections here, candidates' parties are not listed (though I know most of the people and how they lean).
My wife offered (tongue-in-cheek of course) to vote my ballot "correctly" (she identifies as a conservative, though her brother calls her a crypto-liberal). I told her no thanks, I can pick out my own choices for candidates. ::)