ATLANTA — Early voting in the 2024 presidential race begins on October 15 in Georgia, and Monday, October 7, was the first day where county officials could begin sending out mail-in absentee ballots.
You also can already can see sample ballots on many county websites. One thing you'll notice if you click onto those? Republican candidates are listed first for all the races.
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This has come up before, and now with the 2024 election on the horizon we're seeing people ask it again - so we're publishing an updated version of our 2022 story that answered the question: Why are Republicans listed at the top of every race?
There's a fairly simple answer.
Why do Republicans appear first on Georgia ballots?
It has to do with how Georgia law is written to lay out how the ballot must be presented.
Georgia Code § 21-2-285 deals with the regulations state and local officials must abide by when writing an official election ballot.
The reason, according to that law, Republicans appear this year at the top of every race is because party candidates must be listed "in the descending order of the totals of votes cast for candidates of the political parties for Governor at the last gubernatorial election."
So, effectively, when Gov. Brian Kemp won re-election in 2022, he also won the right for all the candidates of his party - the Republican Party - to appear at the top of races on this year's ballot.
If Stacey Abrams had won, Democrats would be at the top.
Is this always the case?
One other question to address, and the answer is no. For primaries or special elections, the law stipulates that "names shall be arranged alphabetically by last name under the title of the office."
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