Section 217.40  Ballots

a)         All ranking ballots used under this Part shall include only those municipal and township offices scheduled to be voted on by the individual voter of the issuing municipality at the election in question.

b)         The ballot form shall contain a blank line horizontally adjacent and left of the name of every candidate appearing on the ballot for the municipality and township in which the voter resides or previously resided, including those who appear on the ballot because of their potential to be nominated following a write-in candidacy.

c)         The ballot shall not contain any blank line that may be used for writing in additional candidate choices.

d)         Any municipality that chooses to use ranked balloting and whose officers are elected on a partisan basis shall conduct its lottery for political party position on the ballot after the certification of the primary ballot. All candidates, including write-in candidates, shall be listed in order of filing within each political party grouping.  New party and independent candidates shall be listed as otherwise specified in the Election Code.  For those municipalities that elect their officers on a non-partisan basis, the order of candidates appearing on the ballot shall be determined by the order of candidate filing, including the results of any lottery held to determine ballot position of those candidates who filed their nominating petitions simultaneously at the opening hour of the filing office.

e)         The names of each candidate for each office shall be grouped together vertically.  However, there shall be a distinct separation between candidate groupings for each office in order to clearly indicate to the voter where the grouping of candidates for each office begins and ends.

f)         The ballot shall include a notation to each voter at the top of each column of candidates indicating to the voter that all candidates may be ranked for each race appearing on the ballot.

g)         The election authority may use multiple columns of candidates on the same ballot form and may print candidate names on both sides of a single ballot, but must ensure that all of the candidate names for a given contest appear on the same side, and that writing on one side of the ballot will not obscure candidate names on the reverse side.

h)         The ballot shall include an instruction directing the voter to write a numeral on the ballot, in ink, next to the name of each candidate that the voter wishes to rank, and that no two candidates should be assigned the same ranking number.