Voters in one Board of Education district in Beaufort County, South Carolina, will find a November ballot with no candidates listed for that office. The only person who submitted a petition thought she had at least 50 valid signatures, but she didn’t. See this story. As a result, the winner will be determined by write-in votes. South Carolina is one of ten states that permits write-in votes in the general election, yet doesn’t have a write-in declaration of write-in candidacy. So, no one needs to file anything to potentially be elected. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for the link.
Indiana and Pennsylvania are two other states in which it is routine for very small jurisdictions (such as townships) to elect people by write-in vote, because candidates often don’t bother to do the work needed to get themselves on the ballot.
In 2001 Daniel Brannen was the only candidate on the ballot (listed as Green Party) for Supervisor in Haines Township, Centre County. I was proud that he did receive votes from the majority of the people who came to the polls for that election, even though there was a write-in campaign against him.
An interesting New York Times article about the anti-war municipal resolution Brannen helped pass can be found at:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70E17F63F550C7B8DDDAA0894DB404482&scp=2&sq=Daniel%20Brannen&st=cse
I forgot to say, that was in Pennsylvania.
Let’s send DEMO REP down there as a write-in. It’ll give him/her something new to rant about.
Hmm… interesting! I believe in Japan, for a long time, in their elections, they had voters go into the voting booth with a blank vote and would have a list of candidates printed on the wall showing the candidate’s names. Then, they write in the candidate(s) they preferred and dropped their ballot off at the ballot box.