Since the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, social scientists have
rediscovered a long tradition of research that examines the effects of
ballot format on voting. Using a new dataset collected by the New
York Times, we investigate the causal effect of being listed on the
first ballot page in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall
election. California law mandates a unique randomization procedure of
ballot order that, when appropriately modeled, can be used to
approximate a classical randomized experiment in a real world
setting. We apply randomization inference based on Fisher's exact
test, which directly incorporates the exact randomization procedure
and yields accurate nonparametric confidence intervals. Our results
suggest that over forty percent of the minor candidates gained more
votes when listed on the first page of the ballot, while there is no
significant effect for top two candidates. We also investigate how
randomization inference differs from conventional estimators that do
not fully incorporate California's complex treatment assignment
mechanism. The results indicate appreciable differences between the
two approaches. (Last Revised April 20, 2005)
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