It seems like an enormous waste of taxpayer money to run an election where there is only one candidate. If no challengers join the election before the deadline, then it should simply be cancelled and the candidate wins the position. I have heard many stories of towns that are suffering budget crises, while running elections for selectman, school board, and water district that have a single candidate for each position.
It’s certainly not unheard of for an ‘Unopposed’ candidate to be defeated by a write in candidate.
If the law permits a write-in candidate, then obviously you have to run the election.
Is there any example of places where the law does not permit a write-in, and the outcome of the election is inevitable not just in practice but in theory also, and yet the authorities organise and conduct a ballot? In most jurisdictions that I’m familiar with the sole candidate will be declared elected without a ballot in that circumstance. If there are any counter-examples I’d be interested to know of them.
Also if there’s an option for ‘none of the above.’
All the times I have voted there have been multiple offices to be filled–even though there occasionally are positions for which there is only one candidate.
In Ohio, I frequently have completely unopposed candidates on my ballot (usually incumbent judges and “professional” officeholders like the county sheriff and engineer), but they’re just additional sections on a ballot that was going to exist anyways, not standalone things. (Write-ins are permitted, but they have to declare their candidacy so many weeks in advance, and if there is no write-in candidate there is no write-in option.)
My city’s charter does provide for the election not being held at all, though, so when the mayor was unopposed last year he got no section on the ballot.
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In Ohio, I frequently have completely unopposed candidates on my ballot (usually incumbent judges and “professional” officeholders like the county sheriff and engineer), but they’re just additional sections on a ballot that was going to exist anyways, not standalone things . . .
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And do you have to mark anything on the ballot opposite their names, or does the ballot simply function as a notification to the voter than only person has been nominated? Can you mark anything opposite their names, without spoiling your ballot?
It’s exactly the same as contested races, but with only one choice. There’s a name and a bubble next to that name to mark (or, on a machine, a square next to that name to touch). You can vote for the person or not, but they do count the votes just the same as if it was a contested race. (For example, in 2008, my county received 83197 ballots, but only 61968 of them contained votes for the incumbent sheriff who was running unopposed. I was one of the non-voters as I found it pointless. I was voting on a paper absentee ballot, though. I think the machines you get on election day nag you to complete everything, although you can ignore the warnings if you’re determined not to vote.)
I don’t know what exactly would be enough to spoil the ballot, but I assume writing something in that area of the ballot (which you could only do on a paper ballot anyways) would be an “identifying mark” or something like that, which I think could spoil the entire ballot (not just the race you marked).
That does seem a bit weird. Unless there is a rule in place that, e.g., you are disqualified from office unless you get a vote in at least 50% of the ballots cast, a decision to mark this section of the ballot appears to have no effect at all - i.e. it’s not a vote at all, in the true sense. And this can only give rise to voter confusion - citizens think they have some say here, whereas in fact they have none. Plus in principle it seems wrong for the balloting proces to invite a voter to make an apparent choice when, in fact, there is no choice to be made. Arguably, it looks like a device to distract the voters attention from the fact that, in reality, they have no choice about who will fill this office. And counting the votes, and publishing the result, seems equally pointless and equally objectionable.
Yes, that seems right.
The cost of an election is trivial compared to other major budget outlays – education, healthcare, law enforcement, etc.
I’ve never seen an election where an unopposed candidate was the only thing on the ballot. Sometimes there’s some minor local race with an unopposed candidate, but it always appears way down the ballot after lots of other competitive races. So the election has to be held regardless.
Of course other countries do have elections where you only vote for one thing. In Canada we usually just make one choice at a time, since the way elections are timed is totally different.
I’m not sure, though, that even then you would have a savings. If nobody ran against Michael Wallace in the next election to me Member of Parliament for Burlington, there would still be an election. Elections Canada would still have to run an election in every one of the other 337 seats that will be up for grabs, so the maximum possible savings would be 1/338th of the cost, and frankly I doubt it’d be 1/1000th because a lot of the costs of running an election would still be incurred even if Burlington wasn’t in play. The symbolism of giving people in Burlington their vote is, IMHO, worth the very small marginal cost.
Except that you’re not giving people in Burlington their vote; you’re just pretending to. What they mark on the paper, or whether they mark the paper at all, will have no effect at all on the outcome of the election; it’s not a vote. You could debate over whether the process should be characterised as symbolism or deception.
OK, not allowing even the option of a write-in strikes me as really turning it into a default certification of the candidate, not so much of an election. That write-in candidates have to be advance-announced seems to be designed to prevent last-minute challenges to party slates.
I am more peeved in these cases in US elections, though, by the opposition party at the relevant committee level being so lame and cheap they can’t even find someone with a pulse to just stand there holding the flag, so to speak. I mean, does this signal states where it costs too much or is too much of a procedural schlep to merely file?
What’s the alternative? Leave the name off the ballot entirely? Then you don’t even know that someone is being elected to that position. Also, it would be a bit absurd for someone to be elected to office with nobody voting for him.
While a lot of people may ignore a sole candidate, the number of votes cast may be correlated to at least some extent with the candidate’s popularity. In the example, the incumbent sheriff got 75% of all votes cast, which suggests he’s reasonably popular. If someone gets very few votes, even if running unopposed, it may be a signal to run someone against him next time.
I knew someone who almost lost an election in which she ran unopposed, in a very minor election for a small organization, There were only about a dozen people eligible to vote, and most of them disliked her. She only received two votes, herself and someone who did not know her well. Several people tried to cast votes against her, even though this wasn’t an option. (I think she received two votes for vs three against, with the rest abstaining.) After quite a kerfuffle, the parent organization accepted her election despite essentially receiving minus one vote.
Leave the office off the ballot entirely. There is no ballot being conducted to fill the office; why clutter up the ballot paper with information irrelevant to the ballot? People will know who is being elected to the position when the list of nominees is published, and again when the list of those elected is published.
Or, if you must, include a statement on the ballot paper to the effect that Joe Bloggs, being the only nominated candidate for the office of dogcatcher, has been declared elected to that office without a ballot. Don’t ask the voter to express any choice in relation to this because they haven’t got a choice, and it’s dishonest to pretend that they have.
That is what is going to happen, whether or not people are invited to put marks on the ballot paper. The only effect of inviting them to mark the ballot is to distract attention from this, not to change it.
Well, I have to say that the fact that a candidate is unopposed in the election might give us a bit of a clue that he may be quite popular. We’d be unwise to try to gauge his popularity by looking at how many people tick his name in this non-election, because we have no way of knowing how many of the non-tickers are opposed to him, and how many are non-tickers because they (correctly) regard ticking as pointless. And by the time the next election comes around, we’ll have better ways of judging his popularity.
Obviously it depends on the rules of the election concerned. If you have a rule that an unopposed candidate cannot be elected without receiving at least 50% of the vote in a ballot (say) then obviously you have to run a ballot. But if you have no such rule then it is not only unnecessary but stupid to run a ballot. You don’t say why the organisation concerned ran a ballot for a post for which there was only one nominee; perhaps it never occurred to them that it was at best pointless to do so, and that the outcome could easily be embarrassing to them. In fact, it does seem to have been embarrassing; if there was “quite a kerfuffle” this was presumably because the people who voted against her felt that their votes should influence their outcome - a reasonable assumption - and were less than gruntled when it turned out their markings on the ballot paper were being ignored.
The electronic ballots here (Arkansas) give you an option to just vote for all unopposed candidates. I don’t know if not voting ignores them or if it means you have to go through them one at a time, as I chose to vote for them the one time I had an electronic ballot, and don’t remember what the prompt actually said.
I think it’s just part of the process. Candidates go on the ballot. I think it serves as notice that the person is running, even if they are running unopposed. And, on print ballots, it’s easier to just make every name have a bubble by it than to single out some without bubbles and have to answer questions from people who will wonder. Heck, I’m sure some people like voting for unopposed candidates, or like the ability to not vote for them, despite that not affecting their election.
How often do those elections take place by themselves?
I’m used to having several at the same time; for example, I worked one of the tables at one which combined Europarliament with City Hall. Even if there had been a single list for the town, the setup would have been required to go on for the Euroelection.
Declared elected by whom, exactly? Now you need a bunch of laws and protections to ensure that this currently unnamed functionary does not improperly declare an election unnecessary, and take away the rights of the voters.
By leaving the election open, the election officer is not put into the position of deciding whether or not voters get to vote, they simply run the election with every eligible candidate represented fairly.
But even under a system where fake elections are held, someone has to decide who is eligible. How is that not exactly the same thing?