This afternoon, Mayor Anthony Williams was declared the winner in the Democratic primary for the post of Mayor of Washington, D.C. This pretty much means he’s won the election, as to date no Republican candidate has come forward to contest the Democratic candidates.
Williams had been kicked off the ballot due to irregularities with the petition signatures required to get him on the ballot, so he ran as a write-in. Amazingly, some 91% of the votes cast were write-ins, and Williams appears to have won quite handily. Frankly, I am impressed, seeing as we Americans sometimes have problems with complicated things such as… voting.
I’m wondering how often this sort of thing happens. I’m curious what was the largest number of write-in votes cast, what was the highest office ever attained by write-in, and any other interesting things you folks happen to know. This doesn’t seem to me to be all that frequent a phenomenon, but perhaps I am wrong. Thanks in advance for your input.
This doesn’t really address your question, but I think it falls under the catagory of interesting write-in tidbits.
Last november, a libertarian party candidate, Julian Heicklen, won 5 separate races by write-in vote. true, they were low level posts(Centre County Assessor, Auditor, Inspector of Elections, Judge of Elections, and Tax Collector), but impressive none the less. incidently, he will have to choose one office to serve, he doesn’t get them all:)
It’s not too surprising he won. As I understand it, there were no mayoral candidates at all on the ballot. So if someone wanted to vote, they had to do a write-in. There was another guy running a write-in campaign, but he really didn’t have much a base of support.
Beverly O’Neill was recently (re-)elected as mayor of Long Beach, California as a write-in candidate. According to this blurb on her website, she’s “the nation’s only large city Mayor to accomplish such an historic feat.”
She was term-limited out, but a fine-print reading of the city’s law revealed that she was only prohibited from appearing on the ballot, but not from being elected or serving.
The ballot for that election was hilarious. It was a run-off, so as it turned out there were no other issues or positions to be decided. It was one guy (Dan Baker) versus the write-in line.
One issue, with one (listed) choice. It felt straight out of the former Soviet Union with their one-candidate “elections.”
John Adams. No, not that John Adams! Last year’s race for some judgeship in Orange County CA had only one listed candidate. Then he came under allegations of possession of child pornography. It was too late for anyone else to get on the ballot, but a bunch of write-in candidates ran extensive campaigns, including some TV ads, to try to unseat the pedophile judge. John Adams was an assistant D.A. who got the most votes; overall, about 2/3 of the votes cast were write-ins, and everyone was pretty happy that the voting populace was sufficiently well informed to know about this guy and not just blindly punch the chad next to the only name present.
I believe that Ron Packard ran as a third party Republican for a House seat in San Diego County in the 1980s and won. He was subsequently reelected the regular way.
IIRC, the official Republican nominee ended up irritating just about everyone in the region.
That’s where you write in the person’s name on the ballot, rather than putting a check mark/punching a hole/pushing a button/whatever beside the people who got on the ballot. Anyone can run a write-in campaign or not run at all and be elected. You can write yourself in if you want. It’s a way to vote for someone who isn’t on the ballot.
Ficus trees run write-in campaigns regularly, but rarely win.
In many U.S. jurisdictions, there are lines on the ballot which let you “write in” the name someone who is not listed on the ballot. (To get listed on the ballot, you generally must submit a required number signatures of registered voters by a specified deadline, or do something similar, like win a primary).
In some localities there are few restrictions on who you can write in – which is why Mickey Mouse wins a few votes for president every four years – while others restrict it to people who have formally filed their intention to run a write-in campaign. I believe that there was a recent Supreme Court ruling that said jurisdictions are not required to have provisions for write-ins, and can legally restrict the candidates to just those listed on the ballot. But most areas have some sort of provision for write-ins, which allows voters to respond to last-minute events which occur after the qualifying date to be listed on the ballot. Also, even write-ins must meet any eligability requirements, like the minimum age for a congressional representative, must be a real person, etc. And winners are allowed to decline the post if they don’t want to be “drafted”.
There were several (5, I think) people actually on the ballot. The bar for getting on the ballot isn’t high (a few thousand legitimate signatures) so there’s always some cranks who make it on the ballot in DC. Heck, there was even an exotic dancer who made it this year. Well, so NPR says.
It’s true that there were no serious contenders for the democratic nomination. But there were people on the ballot.
There was a story about a month ago (no cite) that there was an obscure job with no candidates on a ballot in a small town. Some guy won the election by one write-in vote. The ONLY write in vote.
In 1936, Hal Mohr became the only person to win an Oscar based on a write-in vote. He was not a nominee but still took the Cinematography award for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The practice has since been prohibited.
Regarding the DC balloting, the prime opponent to Williams was a Reverend Willie Wilson. So you had a Williams and a Wilson, and there was some talk about how people would have to be sure to write in the entire name clearly, so there’d be no confusion.
That’s a shame, Archive Guy. I think that’d be a neat practice to revive.
Julian Heicklen is the man. I used to watch him smoke up with his buddies at the entrance to Penn State and watch the State College cops bust him. Eventually they stopped busting him because it was just a waste of time and money.
Democratic Party James Clark 107
Osie L. Thorpe 45
Douglas E. Moore 272
Faith 72
Anthony Williams 61,848 (written in)
Willie F. Wilson 20,689 (written in)
Carol Schwartz 541 (written in)
I bet “Faith” is the stripper.
Williams also won the Republican primary as a write-in.
You might also want to look up Byron “Low Tax” Looper. He was a GOP candidate for the Tennessee state senate in 1998 who shot and killed his opponent, incumbent Sen. Tommy Burks. Although it was too late to get anyone else on the ballot, the Widow Burks was elected as a write-in.
I’m hijacking this thread to include two cases where the name appearing on the ballot is not the person you’re voting for.
In the last major election, Gov. Carnahan of Missouri had died in a plane crash, it was too late to change the names on the ballot, and it was generally believed a vote for him was a vote for his widow to be appointed US Senator, beating then Sen. John Ashcroft(now US Attorney General).
It’s happened several times that a sitting Governor, due to term limits, can’t run again, so his wife runs and wins.
Perhaps the most interesting case of a spouse standing in didn’t have to do with term limits. Gov. James Ferguson of Texas was impeached and removed from office on mulitple charges of corruption by an overwhleming vote, prohibiting him from holding public office. His wife stood in, and won election to the office in 1924 and 1932.
Strom Thurmond was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1954 as a write-in candidate. I submit that that’s the highest political office ever obtained by a write-in candidate (unless someone can prove me wrong).
So we have examples of “stand-ins” for Senator and Governor, and “write-ins” taking a fairly large number of mayoral, judicial and state legislation positions.
Following BobT’s lead, I see that Ron Packard claims to be “only the fourth successful write-in candidate in the history of the United States Congress,” a rare bird indeed. I rather doubt that the other three were elected to the Senate, although I’ll try to run that down.
Thanks for all your interesting responses, everyone. Am I to understand that many of our non-American Dopers are not afforded the opportunity to pen in a vote for Yoda instead of the listed candidates, as some of my friends have done in the past?