Pennsylvania Elections Department Tallies Presidential Write-ins for Virgil Goode and Tom Hoefling

An earlier post today is not completely accurate, but instead of my amending that post (on Pennsylvania presidential write-ins from November 2012) it seems more useful to write a new one. It turns out that the Pennsylvania state Elections Department itself tallied up the write-ins for two particular presidential candidates. The state says Virgil Goode got 383 write-ins and Tom Hoefling got 28.

Pennsylvania is the only large-population state that doesn’t have a procedure for a write-in candidate to file a declaration of candidacy. If Pennsylvania did have such a law, the decision on which write-ins to tally wouldn’t be so arbitrary. It seems arbitrary for the state to have tallied write-ins for Tom Hoefling, and not Rocky Anderson or Roseanne Barr, two candidates who probably received more than 28 write-ins. Thanks to Rhodes Cook for the information on the state tally.


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