It's a sad commentary on the whims and misplaced wisdom of voters, but apparently some favor a candidate simply if he or she appears at the top of the ballot.

This seemingly nonsensical point has not been lost on Connecticut Republicans, who over the summer took Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, a Democrat, to court after she gave candidates from her party top billing for the Nov. 6 election.

State law bases the order on the results of the previous gubernatorial election, which Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy won in 2010. But Gov. Malloy scored 540,970 votes as a Democrat and 26,308 as a cross-endorsed Working Families Party candidate, while Tom Foley received 560,874 votes as a Republican.

Since more GOP than Democratic votes were cast for governor, Republicans argued, their candidate belonged at the top of the ballot.

On Wednesday, the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed, and barring an appeal Mitt Romney will appear above Barack Obama for the presidential race, Linda McMahon atop Chris Murphy for the Senate election, and Paul Formica on top of Joe Courtney for the House contest. In addition, Republican candidates for General Assembly will be placed over Democrats.

This newspaper supported the idea of having the court decide this political issue, but also had called for the legislature to clarify the law. Lawmakers must do so in the next session.

Maybe one idea would be to divide the number of ballots, with one half placing Democrats on top and the other, Republicans - though such a plan could wreak havoc with optical scans used to tally the votes.

The best solution would be if an informed electorate paid more attention to substantive issues and put more thought into how they voted, instead of simply choosing the first name on the ballot.