The Pennsylvania Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation is still not finished compiling the tally of write-in votes cast in the November 2010 election for federal and state office, but it says that it will soon finish. All write-ins in Pennsylvania are valid votes, because the state has no law requiring write-in candidates to file a declaration of write-in candidacy. The state generally won’t furnish a write-in tally for write-in candidates, however. It furnished one for Ralph Nader for president in November 1996, and again for Ralph Nader in November 2004. It furnished one for Constitution Party presidential nominee Chuck Baldwin in 2008, but it arbitrarily did not furnish one for Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney the same year.
All minor party and independent candidates for statewide office who tried to get on the Pennsylvania ballot in 2010 were kept off the ballot by challenges or threats of challenges, so all of them asked that their write-ins be tallied. Pennsylvania was one of only 5 states in 2010 that had statewide elections, but which had only Democrats and Republicans on the statewide ballot. The others were Alabama, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Washington.
What sayeth the ghosts of the 4 July 1776 folks in Philadelphia, PA have to say about the TYRANT Donkey/Elephant party hacks in the PA legislature ???
How come ALL States do not have a required declaration of candidacy for write-in votes ??? — especially after the 2010 AK U.S. Senate write-in mess.
How much $$$ cost to report on each write-in vote for undeclared candidates ??? – even with 14th Amdt, Sec. 2.
P.R. and App.V.
Just an FYI – Alaska allows you to declare as a write-in candidate, and it doesn’t cost anything, but the votes won’t be tallied unless the write-in candidate total is either above or very close to the vote total of the next-highest candidate.
The problem in Pennsylvania is so many counties never count write ins despite the legal requirement for them to do so. My home county of Erie is notorious for not counting all the votes. In fact IIRC I don’t think they have counted write ins in a general election since at least 1950 and possibly even further back then that.
ANY write-in candidate EVER win in PA ???
Write in candidates win in local elections often. It’s the state and federal elections where we have the problem.