New Paltz, New York, Chooses Town Board Member via Write-ins

New Paltz, New York, held an election on November 4 for member of the Town Board. No one appeared on the ballot, but three candidates competed as write-in candidates. Elections officials were not able to determine a winner until two weeks after the election. On November 19, the Board of Elections was finally able to announce the vote for the three write-in candidates: Jeff Logan (Democratic nominee) 519 write-ins; Bob Hughes (independent Democrat) 487; Brittany Turner (Green) 122.

Logan had expected to be on the ballot, but he submitted his petition too late. After public awareness that he would be a write-in candidate, the other two also decided to launch write-in campaigns. Here is a New York Times story about the race, which highlights all the problems that mechanical voting machines present for voters who wish to cast a write-in vote.


Comments

New Paltz, New York, Chooses Town Board Member via Write-ins — 3 Comments

  1. Richard:
    the OTB (opportunity to ballot) primary election for Ulster County committee is still in progress — pending the outcome of litigation now at the USCA 2nd Circuit. Case 08-4731 Van Allen v Walsh. Election districts in the New Paltz area as well as the rest of the county await the go ahead from the courts to complete the election of committee-persons via OTB process (since no IPNY Designating petitions were filed in the entire county, and since there is currently no standing constituted county committee to “raid” the litigation seeks to extend the right of non-affiliated voters to avoid the enrollment change “lock-box” and change their enrolled and vote in the to-be-continued” IPNY OTB primary for county committee.

  2. In jurisdictions where write-in candidates are required to qualify in advance of the election, is there any kind of listing at the polling place of the certified write-in candidates?

    Or do the voters just have to be aware of qualified write-in candidates?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.