Darrell Castle, Constitution Party presidential nominee, is now a qualified write-in presidential candidate in Texas. Initially the state said his write-in declaration was late. However, Castle had sent his filing by a delivery service that provided proof of timely delivery to the Secretary of State. Castle recently submitted this evidence to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, and on September 2 he received a letter from that office, acknowledging that his filing is timely and his write-ins will be counted. Thanks to Kevin Hayes for this news.
Good news. However what is his status for the Tennessee ballot.
The CP’s ballot access map shows him already write-in qualified in Alabama, Indiana, Oregon, and Texas. Darrell has apparently already applied to be a write-in in twenty other states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia. Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia), so if he gets all of those, that would make 24 write-ins which is one more than the 23 states where he is ballot qualified. No word yet on North Dakota or Rhode Island where he may still be petitioning?
North Dakota deadline is Tuesday September 6. Rhode Island is September 9.
Darrell will need to sue North Carolina to get his write-ins counted. Even though he seems to have submitted the necessary 500 signatures, the counties didn’t verify them in time. And the idea that anyone needs a petition to file for write-in status is constitutionally suspect. North Carolina is in the 4th circuit, and the 4th circuit already ruled in 1981 that declared write-ins can’t be forced to pay a filing fee, because the purpose of filing fees is to keep the ballot uncrowded, and write-ins don’t clutter the ballot.
I looked at Wikipedia and it appears that Darrell Castle has sufficient ballot access, including the write-in states, for at least 276 electoral votes. Does this appear correct?
If you count write-in states then Castle is over 330 electoral votes right now. However no one does that since he is not ‘on the ballot’ in write-in states and to my knowledge no write-in candidate has ever won an electoral vote.
Furthermore, if you include write-in status in your counts, then several additional candidates also eclipse 270 electoral votes. If you used this measure to determine debate status, then literally dozens of candidates would make that threshold in 2020. It just isn’t very hard to do.
Texas SOS’ office are a bunch of knuckleheads.
Michael, it turns out the Tennessee Castle petition accidentally listed two candidates representing the 7th US House district and none for the 8th US House district (or vice versa), so even without an issue of petition validity, the petition didn’t have a resident presidential elector in each district, so it was invalid.
Richard, how on earth did that happen? Didn’t anyone double check the petitions?
Wow. So, Castle won’t even be on his homestate, one of the easiest petitions nationwide?
Yep.
Yep. Castle appears on the official write-in list for Texas – which has 12 candidates for President.
Darrell L. Castle
Scott Cubbler
Cherunda Fox
Tom Hoefling
Laurance Kotlikoff
Jonathan Lee
Michael A. Maturen
Monica Moorehead
Robert Morrow
Emidio Soltysik
Dale Steffes
Tony Valdivia
I’ve voted in Texas for decades. The machines they use here do not allow a “write in”. They are a rotary where we slide down the page to click the ones we want. You can’t write in like that.
There are a lot of conservatives in Central California. I feel so angered because all of our huge electoral college votes automatically go to the liberal candidate and the presidential race candidate is announced as the voting places are barely closing the doors. Apparently our vote also won’t even count if we write in Darrell Castle. California’s electoral votes need to be broken up to better represent the voice of CA voters!