California's randomized ballot order is not designed to favor any candidate

Context

Georgia House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right politician, shared a photo of a ballot screen on both X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, captioned, "In California, Trump/Vance is not on the first page of the ballot, but RFK still is even though he dropped out months ago!! CA voters have to click through multiple pages to vote for Trump."

However, in California, the order of presidential candidates on ballots follows a randomized alphabetical order and is rotated throughout the voting districts. 

What we found

The order of the presidential candidates on ballots in California is randomized and rotated throughout districts in accordance with Elections Code section 13112. The California Secretary of State announced the randomized alphabetical order in which the candidates appear on ballots in the state on August 15, 2024. Rather than running from A to Z, it follows the selection of letters chosen at random.

If you appear first in one district of California, then you drop to the bottom of the list in the next district. This continues throughout all of the districts. 

Many California voters have posted photos of their voting ballots online, and although they seem to have a different first candidate, the list still follows the same randomized alphabetical order. The order of candidates displayed on the voting machine in the photo shared by Greene adheres to the requirements of a Senate bill passed in 2020, which mandates that voting machines must randomize candidates to be certified by the Secretary of State.

California shifted from listing incumbents first to using a randomized alphabetical order for candidate names on ballots in 1975. Journalist Shankar Vedantam noted on NPR in 2016 that candidates listed first can gain up to a 10 percentage point advantage. While findings on ballot order effects vary across studies, California adopted randomized and rotated ordering to reduce this potential positional bias.

Additionally, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not drop out of the race entirely. He requested to withdraw from the contest, specifically in swing states and safe Republican states. However, because his withdrawal request came too late, his name remains on ballots in 33 states, including key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Therefore, his name on the ballot in California does not indicate any irregularities.

The verdict

The order in which the presidential candidates appear on the ballot in California is random and rotated throughout the voting districts. The randomized alphabetical order was announced in August. 

Follow Logically Facts' coverage and fact-checking of the U.S. Election 2024 here.