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.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has asked that all briefs in Carl Stevenson’s ballot access lawsuit be submitted by September 8, no later than 1 p.m.  This is the case over Pennsylvania’s in-district residency requirement for circulators.  Carl Stevenson is an independent candidate for State House, 134th district.  He would be on the ballot, except some of his signatures were collected by someone who doesn’t live in his district.  The Commonwealth Court had therefore removed him from the ballot, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is hearing his appeal.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court doesn’t normally provide for oral argument in election law cases, so a decision will come shortly after the Supreme Court receives the briefs.  The Pennsylvania in-district residency requirement for minor party candidates was held unconstitutional in federal court in 2002 in Morrill v Weaver, 224 F Supp 2d 882 (eastern district).  However, the Commonwealth Court said Morrill v Weaver doesn’t apply, because the plaintiffs in that case were Green Party nominees, and Stevenson is an independent candidate.  But, there is no difference whatsoever in the petitioning process in Pennsylvania between the nominees of unqualified parties, and independent candidates.  Parties in Pennsylvania are not ballot-qualified for the November ballot unless they have registration membership of 15% of the state total.  So there is no difference between minor parties and independent candidates, for the mechanics of getting on the ballot.

The New York Times has this story about the Green Party of Arizona, and how a former Republican state legislator recruited candidates to run in its primary, even though the candidates have no connection with the party.

If state election laws would let small qualified parties nominate by convention, this problem would not exist.

The reason it is so easy for write-in candidates to be nominated in the primaries of newly-qualifying parties in Arizona is because the Socialist Workers Party won a lawsuit in 1980.  The SWP had complained about the number of signatures needed to place a member of the party on the SWP’s primary ballot.  The U.S. District Court Judge upheld the number of signatures needed for a candidate to get on the primary ballot (even though the SWP had so few registered members, it was impossible for anyone to get on its primary ballot), but struck down the companion law that required a minimum number of write-ins for anyone to win the primary of a newly-qualifying party.  One write-in is sufficient, if the write-in candidate has more votes than anyone else running for the same nomination.

Write-ins are not counted in Arizona unless the write-in candidate files a write-in declaration of candidacy.  If the Green Party had known that these candidates would be filing declarations of candidacy, the party could have recruited bona fide Greens to also file write-in declarations of candidacy, and the bona fide Greens certainly would have received more write-ins than the candidates recruited by the Republicans.  But, the Green Party had no means of knowing what was about to happen, and by the time they knew, it was too late.