Background: A friend of mine decided to run an “under the radar” campaign for alderman. His idea was that the incumbant was running unopposed so he’d try to garner enough votes (as a write-in) to beat her while she was “napping.” (The last time she ran unopposed she won with under 50 votes.)
So, I go to vote today, for him, and there in the little booth is a flyer that says something to the effect of “If you want to write-in a candidate you must indicate a party preference or your vote will not be counted.”
Now, the questions -
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From what I’ve seen of Wisconsin law, the demand of naming a party in a general election write-in is not warranted (I even called the clerk and she told me that all I needed to do was write-in the name.)
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The flyer with the write-in warning was only in the four little “booths” (desks with blinders), in the meantime, I was encouraged to just go over to a back table and fill out my ballot. I waited for a “booth” to open up because I wanted to see the flyer (a friend voted a couple of hours earlier and told me about it), but a couple of friends just went to a table and never saw the flyer.
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Vagueness - “indicate a party preference” - of who? Me the voter, or of the “write-in” candidate? Where? I searched the form and there was no place to do such a thing. I ended up writing in his name and putting “IND” next to it. A friend of mine said he put the name and “Jedi” next to it.
There was a primary election going on at the same time. The Wisonsin Stautes on ballots explicity say that in spring primary elections no party designation is to be on the ballot, yet they were right there in bold. General election ballots for City contests say, for a write-in, you need to write in a name (nothing about a political preference).
I think the city just did their ballot how they pleased, damn the law. How do I go about fighting this? Is there a group that fights this stuff all the time?