My District doesn’t have the worst Congressman in the House, but none of them are really any great shakes. But, although I don’t have strong feelings against my Congressman, I am extremely frustrated that he is running completely unopposed.
His is the only name on the ballot.
What are my options here?
Am I allowed to vote for every other office and issue, but still leave the section for “United States Representative” blank?
Or will that invalidate my ballot?
I realize, no matter what I do, he’s going to be re-elected. Still, what I really want to know is: If I go to the polls but leave “United States Representative” blank will that be recognized by the candidate and the party as being a protest vote?
If enough voters leave it blank, would the candidate and party notice and think “Hey, we’re losing support! Better get our act together!!!”
You certainly are allowed to not vote in a particualr election here (CT) by leaving a lever unpulled. I can’t imagine that it leaving a particular vote blank would invalidate your ballot in any US election. It’s possible a new electronic voting machine might remind you you hadn’t voted, but I can’t imagine you can’t confirm that was your intention.
Unless California has really peculiar laws, you’re perfectly entitled to cast a ballot (literally or metaphorically) with no vote for a particular office, without that invalidating your vote.
In many states, the press uses “running unopposed” to say that the opposing major party has not nominated anyone for that office; the Socialist Labor Party or the Libertarian Party may have a candidate running for it.
In most states, you are also entitled to cast a write-in vote for the person of your choice. If someone eligible to hold the office, this vote counts. (It will probably never count in a statewide, Congressional, or state-legislature election, but there have been a number of cases scattered across America in which small-town write-in candidates have been elected, getting more write-in votes than their disliked but otherwise unopposed opponents’ tallies.)
Neither would be effective at all, other than from a sense of personal satisfaction. For me, it would be more satisfying to write in “Mickey Mouse” than to leave the ballot blank.
What are you protesting, and who is the intended recipient of your message? I don’t think either of those protest votes are going to get anyone’s attention.
Are you saying “most” just to protect yourself against the off chance that some state doesn’t allow write-in votes or do you really know of one? I ask because I thought that write-in votes were always a legal option everywhere, but I just realized that I don’t know this for a fact.
Everything has happened in this wonderfully wacky country of ours.
In Colorado, write-in votes are legal, but they are not officially counted unless the candidate has filed an affadavit of intent.
If bienville happens to be in Colorado, leaving any race or question blank is OK. Matter of fact, one may leave the entire ballot blank, but that counts as your vote and you don’t get another chance.
My personal feeling is that writing in a name would be a more effective protest than leaving the ballot blank, but that’s opinion, not a GQ-standard factual answer.
North Carolina’s laws are similar to Colorado’s: a candidate proposing to run as a write-in must affirm his intent to run and accumulate a certain number of supporters by petition to have his write-in votes at the election be deemed valid votes for him. (The number is substantial, but nowhere near as many signatures as are required to run as a candidate listed on the ballot.)
You can write in a protest vote, but only the poor smoe at the county voter of registrars is gonna get to see it…
Leaving it blank does not invalidate the ballot. It’s officially counted as an “undervote”, too.
(“X” number of ballots received, all the candidates in that race received “Y” total votes, there is an “Undervote of X - Y”. I think an undervote ratio of 1 or 2% is considered normal…)
Whether they notice is irrelevant. If you don’t want to vote for them, that’s fine. I do it on principle, because I would find it morally reprehensible to vote for the Amphibian party or show support for them in any way. Every time I see an unopposed candidate, it makes me want to run for office. It’s probably easier than trying to get a good job.
My dad says that when he votes, and he doesn’t like any of the candidates for a particular office, he’ll just not pull the lever for that election. If you’ve got an election for, say, governor, senator and representative next Tuesday, but you decide to vote for the first two and skip the representative, your first two votes still count, and they don’t take your skipping the last one to mean you actually voted for the guy.
I’m curious as to whether electronic voting machines allow for skipped races on a ballot, and how accurate they are when it comes to not tabulating such a ballot. The lack of transparency where electronic voting machines troubles me. We don’t have them where I live, but everyone I know who’s had to deal with them has complained about them.
Anyway, all things being equal, don’t fret skipping the unopposed candidate. I can appreciate that principle, but I don’t remember ever having faced it during a major election.
You have to be careful with write in candidates. Most states have laws on the books allowing them to toss aside such candidates as “Mickey Mouse” Or “This guy sucks”
If you’re going to protest it’d be much better to write a third party candidate who has no chance but will work to see his vote is counted.
I wish we could get a law passed that required all elections to have “None of The above.” on it. It would still allow the actual person with the most votes to win but it’d make a strong statement.
Absolutely, positively not. Nobody cares how many votes an unopposed candidate receives. Many newspapers don’t bother publishing vote totals for unopposed candidates. I’ve never seen anybody compare the votes for an unopposed candidate against the total number of people casting ballots.
Even in the unlikely event that somebody did make that comparison, it wouldn’t reveal much. If your state allows straight-ticket voting, anybody voting the ticket for the opposite party will automatically “undervote” the House race. Many people routinely leave down-ballot races blank, especially when there is no contest. Neither your Congressman nor anybody else will care a whit about his vote total vis-a-vis blank ballots.
In Nevada all of the races with real people in them have a slot marked “None of the Above” for which you can vote. It has no real effect on the race. If NOTA gets 45% of the vote, candidate A 35% and candiate B the remaining 20%, candidate A still wins, but at least he can’t claim to have a mandate from the people.
In practice, it’s never come up, the NOTA vote typically being 2 or 3%. I don’t recall reading whether the practice has resulted in smaller under-vote totals or not.
