Now It Can Be Told.

There's one oddity of the California Special Election that I haven't mentioned here. I wanted to, of course, but I was bound by a code of secrecy. You see, I had incorporated it into a puzzle in the Grey Labyrinth, and since I knew that there is at least one reader who solves those puzzles, it wouldn't be fair.

For over twenty-five years, California has used a complicated process to ensure fairness in voting. Apparently, there's a marked tendency among voters who enter the polling booth without have made a clear decision to just vote for whoever's name is on top. So California rotates the order of the name in every district and provides, for every election, a brand new alphabet to use when ordering the names of candidates. This time around, the alphabet is: RWQOJMVAHBSGZXNTCIEKUPDYFL.

Catchy, huh?

The alphabet is pulled in a ceremony that looks more like the California Super Lotto. A young woman pulled ping-pong balls out of a chamber, reading letters instead of numbers. Each one was pulled out until the new alphabet appeared.

Although not on the tip of everyone's tongue, this is definitely the most publicized random arrangement of the English alphabet that I can think of. The drawing was covered in most major California news sources, and it's been mentioned at least once by most national news outlets. There was a story about it on NPR, and the recall alphabet has appeared on CNN web pages in stories about the election. It was also recently used as a trivia question on "Wait, Wait — Don't Tell Me."

It's rare to see letters get the spotlight like this. I've written one puzzle based on it, and I can't imagine that there won't be more. It seems like a useful datum to save for future reference for a while.