This year, the Virginia State Board of Elections won’t tally the number of votes received by the various declared write-in presidential candidates. This is the first time the Board has failed to count such votes since Virginia has had write-in space on the November ballot for President. Before 1997, Virginia ballots lacked any write-in space for president, but SB 667 in 1997 added write-in space to the presidential part of the ballot. It passed unanimously.
The Board says the law forbids the votes from being tallied unless the write-in total was at least 5% of the total presidential vote. However, the law the Board cites, 24.2-675, has existed since before 1997. Yet in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012, the Board did tally write-ins for declared presidential write-in candidates.
The declared write-in candidates in 2016 who are injured by this law include Darrell Castle, Rocky De La Fuente, Tom Hoefling, Chris Keniston, Larry Kotlikoff, Mike Maturen, all of whom did have their votes counted in a majority of states.
In 1964 the U.S. Supreme Court said in Gray v Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, at 380: “All qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right to cast their votes and have them counted. Every voter’s vote is entitled to be counted once. It must be correctly counted and reported.”
You forgot Mike Maturen of the American Solidarity Party, who likely got the most write-in votes in Virginia besides Castle and has gotten write-in votes counted in about a dozen states.
Thank you, Jake. I amended the post just now.
Alabama, Alaska, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington are the other states that I can think of right now that also do not report the specifics of which candidates received how many write-in votes. Indeed, Washington allows voters to write-in, but won’t report the write-in totals as part of the official results, and that has led to the unfair way the state is treating the Libertarian Party.
14th Amdt, Sec. 2 is still a part of the nearly dead USA Const.
Do you know if some of the counties reported the numbers to the state and they won’t reveal them or were the counties ordered not to count them?
How many dollars to count each regular vote and write-in vote ???
What price for Democracy ???
Washington does include write-in votes as part of its canvass.
Excellent find on the Supreme Court case, Richard! That one is quite timely…
In Washington, they total the write ins only if a write in candidate gets more votes than the winner’s margin of victory.
Thanks Richard.
North Dakota is another state which did not count votes for each write-in candidate because there weren’t quite enough write-in votes, even though write-in candidates do need to register.
Michael,
In Washington they always count the total number of write-ins. They only tally write-ins to individual candidates if it could affect the outcome.
That is not a literal quote from Gray v Sanders.
Can write ins be counted for candidates on the ballot in Washington state? If not, I don’t know why they’d use the winning candidate’s margin of victory. I know New York State doesn’t allow it because it’s assumed if you wrote in someone on the ballot, you intended to vote for a different person by that name, or you would have voted for them on the ballot.
Where is that MODEL ELECTION LAW ??? — to end ALL of the lawless arbitrary stuff by govt HACKS.
Overvotes, Undervotes, and Write-in votes might be valid votes. Much of the specifics of Washington law result from the 2004 gubernatorial election.
If someone marked a ballot for Clinton and and also wrote in Clinton, it is not likely that they intended to deliberately vote for two different Clinton’s.
Some apparent overvotes might be votes that a voter had corrected. They might have attempted to cross out a vote, or erased it. They may have added a vote. A machine scanner won’t understand “Not Clinton, I meant Trump”
A vote that is detected as being an undervote by a machine scanner may be irregularly marked. Perhaps they circled a box, rather than making an X, or maybe they used a colored pen.
The most common application of Washington’s statutes is in the Top 2 primary, where there is only one candidate on the ballot, and a write-in candidate may have qualified for the general election. Washington has a 2% threshold to advance to the general election, so that is the more typical case where the number of write-ins is used as a test to determine whether to actually tally them.
It should also remember that in 1994, Linda Smith won a congressional primary in Washington as a write-in candidate, and then went on to defeat a three-term incumbent in the general election.
New York statutes do not permit a write-in vote for an on-ballot candidate to be counted. The statute itself does not indicate the motivation. The assumptions made by the New York legislature may be erroneous, or self-serving.
After the 2000 Bush v. Gore fiasco and the 2002 HAVA Fed law the MORON HACKS in the State regimes are required to have a definition of a LEGAL vote.
Namely does each State write-in law REQUIRE a write-in box/oval to be filled in before any name next to the box/oval be counted ??? — i.e. NO scanning of the write-in space.
Demo Rep,
No. In New York for example, it is specifically forbidden to have any oval or other mark for the write-in box. New York also forbids a “write-in” vote to be counted for a candidate whose name is on the ballot.
In Texas, most votes are cast on DRE’s. You have to select an option to vote for a write-in candidate, which will clear any votes for other candidates. You then have to enter the name, letter by letter using a virtual keyboard.
J.R. — one more reason to have that MODEL Election L-A-W — about the same in ALL Democracy States.
The EVIL monarchs/oligarchs are again on the march — Russia , China, Iran, etc.
Demo Rep,
Texas is sovereign. There might not be that same belief in areas such as the Old Northwest Territory where the federal government sliced it up into five areas called States.
Texas became subject to the USA Const when it was allowed to join the Union in 1845.
One main result – the Mexican American WAR — taking over of more of Mexico for the now SW States.
ALL 50 States are equally sovereign within their arbitrary boundaries carved out of Mother Earth.