Paper All-Star ballots being retired by MLB
Voting for midsummer classic will go all-digital in 2015 -- like other major leagues do it.
By
Dave Brown
•
2 min read
The only hanging Chads left in Major League Baseball this season will be any errant pitches left over the plate by the likes of Chad Billingsley, Chad Qualls and Chad Bettis. Major League Baseball is doing away with the paper punch ballots for All-Star voting that have been a fixture at ballparks (and sometimes drug stores) every season since 1970.
An official MLB memo obtained by Bloomberg News notes that, going forward, every All-Star vote be digital in nature:
The March 9 memo from Bob Bowman, baseball’s president for business and media, said online voting accounted for more than 80 percent of ballots cast last season and that more than 16 million paper ballots went unused.
“We therefore have made the decision to go green, while also saving the cost of managing an offline program,” Bowman wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
This change was inevitable, pragmatic and prudent, given how most votes are cast, and that only 4 million paper ballots were cast in 2014. It's just easier for fans to use their phones or sit at their computers and vote — which is why the sports all introduced electronic voting. All of the other major sports leagues already exclusively use electronic voting since 2011, so MLB actually is a little behind the curve here, though they can afford to be. By comparison, interest in the baseball All-Star game always laps that of the other sports.
From a nostalgia standpoint, some might miss the punch cards because of the tradition. If you're old enough, it's how you grew up voting for the All-Star game because it was the only way to vote. They were great for write-in candidates as well, though that almost never worked. One downside of the paper ballot: The names had to be known a certain amount of time in advance in order to get the ballots to the printer, which led to some inappropriate names on the ballot. Guys at the wrong position. Injured players. Guys traded out of the league. Guys who don't deserve to be on the ballot because they're having down years. Guys who aren't on the ballot but should be. Going all digital won't eliminate those red herrings, but it ought to reduce them. The ballot should be a better ballot. Paper, schmaper!
Once the "final vote" concept began (it's always been online-only) the handwriting was on the chatroom wall for paper ballots. It was just a matter of time. If there's enough complaining — and people always complain — maybe MLB will bring back the punch cards in future seasons in some form. Certainly, if they do, they'll be in smaller quantities.
Not to get all Aldous Huxley, but is anyone going to be using paper in quantity in 25 years?
