Master Lever

Master Lever, or Straight-Ticket Voting Option: a ballot option that offers voters the possibility to vote for the candidates of a specific party for all elections listed on a ballot. According to one study, the Master Lever was used by 45 to 58% of Texas voters in 1998 to 2010.

In the run up to the 2016 general election, the GOP-held legislature of the state of Michigan passed a bill to ban the Master Lever after a number of previous unsuccessful attempts. (In Michigan, the Master Lever was believed to benefit the Democrats ever since the Great Depression.) The Democrats challenged the ban in court and argued that eliminating the quick option of voting for all candidates from a single party would disenfranchise African-American voters. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reinstate the ban, so the Master Lever remained in place for the November election. Remarkably, the GOP benefited from losing the case. Some of the unexpected GOP winners got nearly half of their votes from voters who pulled the "Republican" lever.

"The Republicans (repealed) straight ticket voting, the Democrats fought it and got it held, and then we ended being the benefactors of straight-ticket voting."
State Rep. Lisa Posthumus Lyons, R-Alto, chair of the House Elections Committee

The ban was later upheld on appeal, and Michigan voters then restored straight-ticket voting through Proposal 3 in 2018.

This dispute over the Master Lever in Michigan is only one in a series of debates that most US states went through as they eliminated the option over the decades. In the 2016 general election, ten states offered it: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. All ten voted for Donald Trump.

Our research

• The Theory of Straight Ticket Voting, with Ioanna Grypari and Erin Hengel. Social Choice and Welfare, 2023.
• One Strike and You're Out: The Effects of the Master Lever on Senator Positions, with Ioanna Grypari and Erin Hengel. Working paper.

Further reading

States currently offering the Master Lever: National Conference of State Legislatures.

Michigan, 2016: HuffPost, Wall Street Journal, Detroit News. Wisconsin: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Rhode Island: Providence Journal, Rhode Island Public Radio.