Single Candidate Elections and Write-In Candidates

November 4, 2014 12:33 PM

Just voted. Confused about so many slots only showing one candidate, along with a "write-in" blank line candidate.

I saw about ten judge positions that had just one candidate to vote for. Are these positions less desirable than I imagine them to be? Are there qualifications that are hard to meet? In my civilian imagination, these should be prestigious, sought-after titles, and being local, I would expect the competition to be stiff.

Bonus question: aren't write-in candidates kind of... small-town? What happens if there is a write-in winner named James Smith or Maria Garcia and a bunch of them come forward to claim the title?

posted by rada to Law & Government (9 answers total)

Best answer: Incumbent judges rarely lose, so I think most qualified individuals do not consider it worth their time/money/effort to run unless there is a vacancy or a significant scandal.

For write in candidates, my ballot specifies that I should list the name and address of the person I am writing in, and so this would preclude multiple James Smith's from claiming to have won. Not sure about the rules where you are.
posted by rainbowbrite at 12:42 PM on November 4, 2014 [3 favorites]

This is highly dependent on jurisdiction, but it could be that what you are seeing is a a retention ballot for judges. It looks like you are in Minnesota, which is not on the Wikipedia page for retention elections.

Google suggests that various referendums for retention elections in Minnesota have appeared on the ballot, but I can't quite work out if any of them have passed. I don't think any of them have. This article explains more about Minnesota judicial elections, and says they are typically uncontested. According to the article, this is usually viewed as a positive for Minnesota, since it means judges are able to retain an air of impartiality.
posted by OrangeDisk at 12:48 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

To answer your final question, write-in candidates don't always work like that. You often can't just draft someone into the race by writing their name on the ballot. Instead, write-in candidates need to be on the list of "qualified write-in candidates" maintained by the local agency that handles elections. Usually, you get on this list by registering your candidacy just like anyone else, but after the deadline to get on the ballot. This might also happen if a candidate isn't eligible to appear on the ballot because he lost his party's primary, for instance. Once you're registered, the elections office verifies your residency and that you meet the other requirements for the office and puts you on the list.

So since there are usually only a few qualified write-in candidates in each election, duplicate names aren't generally an issue. If that happened, I presume they'd deal with it the same way they would handle two candidates with the same name on the regular ballot: middle initials or names.
posted by zachlipton at 12:55 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I poked around some more, and found that in Minnesota, write-in candidates must file a request to get their votes counted. Apparently, this is common in jurisdictions with large populations, both to make sure the written-in names get matched up correctly, and to make sure the person wants the job they are being written-in for.
posted by OrangeDisk at 12:56 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In some states, the "proper" way to become a judge is to wait for an opening, then apply to the selection committee and be appointed to fill the vacancy, and then get re-elected unopposed until you decide you don't want to be a judge any more. Since judges generally have to be lawyers who practice in the desired geographical area, it's a small world, and there aren't that many people who want to mess with the system unless there is a really good reason to oppose a particular judge.
posted by smackfu at 12:59 PM on November 4, 2014 [4 favorites]

My previous comment got deleted so I'll rephrase. I've worked as an election judge and in order to get a vote counted for a write-in candidate, that candidate has to register with the county clerk's office as an "official write-in candidate." (I election-judged in a small town, so it's not just for jurisdictions with large populations, but most likely this is not the case everywhere.) So even if you write in John Smith, if the election judges go through the ballots and see there are three write-in votes for John Smith, if no one named John Smith bothered to declare himself an official write-in candidate, those votes are ignored by the judges as if they hadn't been made. And did you know that Strom Thurmond got his start as a write-in candidate? So it's not necessarily a small-town thing.
posted by jabes at 2:25 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: aren't write-in candidates kind of... small-town? What happens if there is a write-in winner named James Smith or Maria Garcia and a bunch of them come forward to claim the title?

I'm a small town election worker in Vermont. There are basically three kinds of write-ins that I see

- Likely write-ins - these are people who didn't get their petition to be on the ballot in on time but are actively campaigning and may have a chance of winning
- Unlikely write-ins who are real people - these are people's real names (usually in town) who someone writes in for a position but not because they are likely to win
- Jokes - super irritating since we have to count them all anyhow.

Sometimes it's tough to tell what is a joke and what is not a joke. There is a legend about there being an actual person in a town called Bart Simpson and so a vote for Bart Simpson which would otherwise be considered a joke (and not counted, there are reasons and a bunch of crap you need to read to staff a polling place and count vote) needed to be counted. In real life, pretty much there are only people in the first category who have any chance of winning and there's a slim-to-none chance that there would be two Bill Smiths running in any way for Library Trustee. It's so unusual I don't even know what would happen if there was a write-in winner who had a shared name. But the fact that I don't personally know doesn't mean there isn't actually a pretty seriously involved process for figuring this all out and each state has slightly different laws about how it all works.
posted by jessamyn at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2014 [3 favorites]

Another possible reason for having only one candidate might be if your area leans heavily towards one party or the other. I live in a very Republican area; for many local races on my ballot, the Democrats don't even bother fielding a candidate because it wouldn't be worth the effort. (I usually vote in the Republican primaries knowing it's the de facto election for such local offices.)
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 4:00 PM on November 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Are these positions less desirable than I imagine them to be? Are there qualifications that are hard to meet?

Both. Judgeships are a great way for lawyers to (semi-) retire, but they won't do it if they still have major earnings potential, as the salaries are usually fairly modest.

And usually there are minimum requirements (though not in all jurisdictions), e.g. having a law degree or being a member of the bar. (In Wisconsin, being licensed for the last five years.) So not just anybody can run.

For practicing lawyers, whether on the defense or prosecution side, there's also this wrinkle: Do you want to show up in the court of the judge you challenged for election? That makes it especially tricky.

As to write-ins, my experience as an election judge is that we had to count every single write-in and report those to the city clerk -- but the results are only reported for official candidates.

It's really not that uncommon for low-level offices to be uncontested. County Board seats, for example, are decided in off-year elections by as few as half of 50-100 votes, and most incumbents run unopposed. This year, our sheriff, DA, and some state legislative candidates are running unopposed.

Sometimes write-in candidacies are statewide. This usually is the result of either a glitch of some kind (shortfall in nominating signatures, perhaps), or a late ideological or egotistical split in a party's primary candidacies.
posted by dhartung at 4:24 PM on November 4, 2014 [1 favorite]