If you’re a candidate for office in Snohomish County, change your last name to Bhab.
That will put you at the top of the 2015 ballot and voters’ pamphlet because “B” is the first letter of the alphabet, with “H” second.
The lot draw at the end of candidate filing week in May created this alphabet for ballot order: B-H-W-F-K-A-U-R-P-C-Y-X-V-E-S-Z-M-Q-G-D-O-I-N-L-J-T.
That means that in the primary for county executive among James Robert Deal, John Lovick, Norm Nunnally, Dave Somers and Robert J. Sutherland, the ballot order will be Sutherland, Somers, Deal, Nunnally, Lovick.
Sutherland is first because “S” comes before “D, “ N” and “L” and because the second letter in Sutherland comes before the second letter in Somers.
In a general election after a primary, the candidates will appear in the order they finished in the primary. In a general election that had no primary because it’s a non-partisan office with only two candidates, the order would follow the lot-draw order. So, in the November school-board election between Carin Chase and Bill Willcock, Willcock’s name will appear first because “W” comes before “C” in the drawn alphabet. In the Ronald Wastewater District, which is primarily in King County, candidates will appear in the computer-generated order that King County uses.
Each county can choose its own form of lot draw. Snohomish County Elections Manager Garth Fell says that the county has been using the drawn-alphabet system longer than the eight years that he has been on the job.
Without a drawing, Aaronson always would be first, and Zylstra always would be last.
Why not do an individual drawing for every contest? That would have county elections officials conducting more than 100 drawings around the county every year.
For this year, Mr. or Ms. Bhab will be at the top of ballots, and anyone named Tjit will be at the bottom.
Wait ‘til next year, Tjit. The draw finally may go your way.
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
