This past Thursday I wrote a diary on whether or not I should vote for unopposed candidates in the down ticket races here in Delaware. (Link)
There were a lot of great thoughts on the subject in the comments, and they mainly centered around using write-in votes as a means of protest against candidates who were running opposed.
So I ended up deciding that I would use the write-in votes instead of giving my vote to candidates whom I honestly wasn't thrilled to have in office. I even toyed with the idea of launching a last minute campaign on Facebook to try to become County Council President.
Well now a wrench has been thrown in my plans.
I found this article today on the local newspapers website:
There's no place for write-ins on Tuesday ballots
Okay, so the title of the article is a little misleading, there IS a spot for write-in votes. However the catch is that they aren't going to count them.
Earlier this year, the General Assembly passed a law that allows only write-in candidates who have declared themselves to state or county elections departments to be counted. The Sept. 30 deadline has come and gone with no declared write-ins.
"I believe it’s 110 percent unfair," Conrad said. "It goes against the spirit of democracy."
Election officials disagree, saying the law is in keeping with the rules of good governance because it puts a check on bogus write-ins such as Superman or Wonder Woman. Those ballots are time consuming to count, state Elections Commissioner Elaine Manlove said.
"You cannot imagine reading all those tapes," she said. "We get Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. We also get ‘anybody but’ and ‘none of the above.’ "
...
Future write-in candidates must qualify by filling out a form at the state or county Department of Elections office. They do not have to pay the filing fee, Manlove said.
"I don’t want anyone to think we were too lazy to count the votes," she said. "It’s just extremely time consuming, and it’s just not fair. it is a check and balance on who these people are."
You had to register by September 30th?! Are you kidding me? That goes against the whole spirit of being a write-in candidate!
We shouldn't just be throwing away votes and lumping them in an "other" category because write-in candidates didn't register in time! I understand how it might be frustrating and time consuming to count all those write-ins, but they still are still votes and should be counted. I don't think the argument that it's time consuming is a legitimate here. So what if it's time consuming? It's still something that should be done! We don't stop doing other things because they're time consuming! I mean having elections in the first place is time consuming!
And on a side note, sure this bill did get signed by a democratic governor, and I hate to be a kool-aid drinker, but:
House Majority Leader Richard C. Cathcart, R-Middletown, drafted the legislation at the request of the state Department of Elections.
Hooray republicans! Government so small they don't even need to deal with counting votes!