Recently printed sample ballots show that when Leflore County voters go to the polls Nov. 4, they will have to scan through a gulf of blank space that separates most of their choices for county office.
The column for District 4 supervisor, for instance, lists Democratic candidate Sylvester Hoover at the top, followed by four blank spaces before incumbent Wayne Self's name appears.
The names are arranged so far apart because Self is running as an independent. The order the county Election Commission set for the ballot lists independents below a slate that begins with Democrats, then Republicans, and then three lesser known parties - the Reform, the Green and the Constitution.
All elections on the Leflore County sample ballot follow this format.
Self and others say the arrangement is unfair.
"I really think the independents should be under those Republicans," he said. "If you don't go in there looking directly for my name, you won't see it. It's just crippling anybody who's running independent."
In a county election with seven independents, the arrangement could significantly affect the outcome, Circuit Clerk Trey Evans said. Another independent incumbent, Evans appears four slots below Democratic challenger Elmus W. Stockstill.
"It's below eye level," Evans said. "In a close race, it'll make all the difference in the world. It's just not even fair to anybody who's actually running, and there's several contested races in this election."
But the same blank space separated the independent candidates from the rest of the field in the last election, according to Willie Perkins Sr., the attorney for the Board of Supervisors, who was designated to look into the dispute this week.
"We looked at the ballot done in the 1999 election, and the independents hold the same position on that ballot that they're holding on this one," Perkins said. "There has been no change."
Edward Course, chairman of the commission, contends that the ballot follows state law. Last week, he told county supervisors that the order of candidates in the county election must follow the ballot for statewide offices, which lists party candidates before independents. Course could not be reached for comment Friday.
But Evans, whose office is in charge of registering voters, holding elections and counting votes once polls close, says the order is left up to the Election Commission.
"Usually, independents follow Republicans and Democrats, but this is the first time we've ever had a Reform Party, a Green Party and a Constitution Party," Evans said.
Instructions from the secretary of state's office printed on the back of every ballot explicitly point to this state law: "The arrangement of the names of the candidates, and the order in which the titles of the various offices shall be printed, and the size, print and quality of paper of the official ballot is left to the discretion of the officer charged with printing the official ballot; but the arrangement need not be uniform."
Perkins cited another statute governing ballot design. The state furnishes local election commissioners with a sample of the officials ballot, "the general form of which shall be followed as nearly as practicable," Perkins said, reading the law.
"That's pretty much a mandate that the state sends down, unless you can show some reason why it shouldn't be," he said. "And just because someone wants a different spot, to me, doesn't justify changing the ballot."
The most important rule of thumb in organizing elections is to minimize confusion among voters, says David Blount, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.
"There's no reason to have three or four blank spaces there," Blount said. "This issue has to do with the design of the ballot and making it as clear and understandable as possible."
Officials have have paid keener attention to possible election mixups since the dispute over the 2000 presidential race in Florida. Blount explained that many problems like that one are the results of poor ballot design.
That's not to say that there's anything wrong with Leflore County's ballot, Blount said.
"I haven't seen the ballot, but that's something we need to be sensitive to, particularly in races where there aren't minor party candidates," he said.
The only order the secretary of state's instructions stipulate applies to the overall structure of the election. Statewide races must come first, followed by district and county elections. That policy puts supervisor races last on this year's ballot, and it puts independent candidates for supervisor in the bottom right corner.
District 5 Supervisor Arvel Burden, another incumbent running as an independent, says the placement puts him at a disadvantage.
"My concerns are where I will be on the ballot, which is all the way on the bottom line, all the way on the right-hand side, and there will be a lot of vacant space between my name and the rest of the names," Burden said.
Burden, who ran as an independent in 1999, predicts he will lose about 5 percent of his support because of confusion.
"After the last election, I had a few people who said they couldn't find my name," he said.
At this point, the Election Commission has everything ready to roll. The order of elections and candidates has been set. The ballots have already been printed. And samples are available in the Circuit Clerk's Office.
Self, though, says he is still trying to get the format changed. And that's still a possibility, according to Evans.
"The machines haven't been programmed yet," the clerk said. "The printer told us they would reprint the ballot and could do so fairly quickly."
But the effectiveness of the ballot might not be decided until election day, according to Blount.
"The question is will every single voter understand their choice of candidates," he said.
