Straight-ticket voting

Straight-ticket voting allows voters to choose a party’s entire slate of candidates with just one click of a button or flick of a pen.

While the term can also refer to a voter's decision to manually cast votes for all candidates from the same party, in this explainer it refers to a ballot option that registers a vote for each of a party’s candidates in each partisan race. (Nonpartisan contests and ballot questions fall outside the scope of straight-ticket voting, and voters must mark them individually.) Critics argue that a straight-ticket voting option makes it harder for third-party candidates to gain traction, allows extremists within parties to be elected, and encourages voters to be less informed at the polls. Proponents argue it saves time at the polls, reduces the risk of voters making errors on their ballot, and decreases voter fatigue—when a voter grows tired of marking choices on their ballot and so casts an incomplete ballot or does not cast their ballot at all.

This explainer was last updated on October 7, 2028.

Where is straight-ticket voting used?

As of 2026, six states offer straight-ticket voting on the ballot: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. While Indiana partially eliminated the practice in 2016 when Senate Bill 61 prohibited straight-ticket voting for at-large races, in 2026, the legislature extended straight-ticket voting to at-large districts in House Enrolled Act 1377, making the straight-ticket option apply to every partisan race on the ballot. The law will take effect January 1, 2027. Where it is available, straight-ticket voting is frequently used by voters. In the 2022 and 2024 general elections, for example, about two-thirds of Alabama voters chose to vote straight-ticket; in Oklahoma, the straight-party share has hovered between roughly 38 and 46 percent in recent election cycles.

Proponents and detractors

One objection to straight-ticket voting is that it reduces participation in nonpartisan elections that are on the ballot, which are most often for local positions that receive less attention. Bonneau and Loepp (2014) find that in elections that include nonpartisan races, the option to vote straight-ticket decreases voter participation for those offices because voters who choose the straight-ticket option may “believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them.”

However, using cast vote records (anonymized records of each choice a voter made on their ballot) from South Carolina's 2018 general election, Thornburg, Davis, and Buell (2026) find that the drop-off in nonpartisan races among straight-ticket voters is largely intentional, rather than done by mistake. Few of these voters skip every nonpartisan item, showing a more selective pattern of abstention rather than general confusion. Along similar lines, Remmel and LaForge (2021) find that states eliminating straight-ticket voting only slightly reduces roll-off in down-ballot races and ballot measures. Straight-ticket voters appear to be making deliberate choices about which low-information races to skip, and removing the ballot mechanism is not a reliable way to get voters to complete their ballots.

Other critics, like Chertoff and Robinson (2012), argue that straight-ticket voting encourages voters to rely on party heuristics, rather than educating themselves on individual candidates. Proponents counter that most Americans already vote for just one party on the ballot. While only a small number of states allow an official option for straight-ticket voting, choosing to vote for only one party’s candidates up and down the ballot is common across the United States. In their analysis of over 50 million ballots from the 2020 general election, Conevska et al. (2026) find that national partisanship accounts for more than eighty percent of the variation in how people vote for partisan state and local offices, but less than ten percent for nonpartisan local contests and ballot measures. Kuriwaki (2025) also finds that ticket splitting is higher in state and local offices than it is for Congressional races. Voters cross party lines when they have information about individual candidates such as incumbency and perceived quality; that information is most decisive in down-ballot races.

Advocates for straight-ticket voting also argue that it can have a positive impact on ballot completion, and removing it may impact communities disproportionately. Engstrom and Roberts (2016) find that straight-ticket voting decreases the number of partially completed ballots. They also report that prior to North Carolina abolishing the ability to vote via straight-ticket in 2013, counties with larger Black populations used the option more frequently.

Decline of Straight-ticket Voting and Current Status

In 2007, thirteen states offered the straight-party option in all elections: Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. A few more offered it in a restricted form: New Jersey allowed it in primaries only, Rhode Island in general elections only, North Carolina and Wisconsin in every race except President. Less than twenty years later, that number has shrunk to just six states.

This is part of a longer trend. Over the past three decades, state after state has eliminated straight-ticket voting; fourteen states have repealed it since 1994. The most recent states that have dropped the option for voters include Utah in 2020, Pennsylvania in 2019, Iowa and Texas in 2017, and Michigan in 2016—although Michigan later reversed course, with voters restoring the option through a 2018 ballot measure that took effect in 2019.

These changes have elicited some pushback. Prior to the system’s repeal in Texas, about 67% of voters cast straight-ticket ballots in 2018, with the heaviest use in high-minority precincts and large urban counties. Legislators voiced concerns over whether the new measure made voting inconvenient or put an undue burden on voters of color, and the removal of the straight-ticket option was contested in the courts. Ultimately, the state’s 2020 general election proceeded without the option, and in 2022 a Fifth Circuit decision vacated the injunction, holding that the plaintiffs had sued the wrong official; straight-ticket voting did not return.

In other states, the debate continues. While Indiana recently reinstated the ability to vote straight-ticket in at-large races, some groups have pushed to end the practice, arguing it crowds out independent candidates and decreases the attention paid to down-ballot and nonpartisan races. Several bills have been introduced to eliminate straight-ticket voting in the state; as of 2026, such efforts have yet to become law.

Conclusion

Six states offer the straight-ticket voting option, down from thirteen in 2007. The question of whether the remaining states should keep it continues to surface in legislatures and, occasionally, in the courts. Proponents point to time saved at the polls, fewer ballot errors, and more complete ballots, while critics argue that the option encourages voters to lean on party labels and makes it harder for third-party candidates and nonpartisan contests to gain attention. While straight-ticket voters do skip nonpartisan and down-ballot races more often, recent work finds much of that skipping is deliberate, and removing the option has little impact on ballot completeness. When looking at voter behavior, we see that voting for a single party's slate remains common even in states where no straight-ticket option exists.

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