The September 14 issue of the Patriot-News, the daily newspaper of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, explains why so few votes get cast in the county that contains Harrisburg, Dauphin County. See this article. Dauphin County uses Electec 1242B vote-counting machines. A voter who wishes to cast a write-in vote must first find the write-in button for the particular office. The voter pushes it, and then sees another button in another part of the machine that then begins flashing a red light. The voter pushes that button next, and that opens a small shutter, exposing a piece of paper within. The voter write-ins in that shutter, and must manually close the shutter.

In November 2006, Carl Romanelli, the write-in candidate for U.S. Senate for the Green Party, was only credited with 9 write-ins in Dauphin County, and the other statewide write-in candidates for the Green, Libertarian and Constitution Parties were not credited with any write-ins in Dauphin County.

The Patriot-News wrote this story because the incumbent Mayor of Harrisburg, Stephen Reed, is pondering whether to run a write-in campaign in November 2009 in order to stay in office. He lost the May 2009 Democratic primary.