Here's the response I got in the bug report. Apparently it's not a bug, and the cart isn't supposed to sort them alphabetically.
[quote][color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]Thank you for the message.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]
Quote[/size][/font][/color][color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]
When you initially set up a new list of option variants and don't number them, it sorts them alphabetically (on the customer side, not the admin side).[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]Unfortunately, we failed to reproduce such an issue on the default CS-Cart v4.2.3 installation.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]In the customer area, option variants are always sorted by position. If the position is not defined, option variants are displayed in the same order as they were added to the database.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=3]Thank you.[/size][/font][/color][/quote]