Write-in winner for PA State Senate Scott Wagner. Image courtesy of Breitbart.com.
Believe it or not, write-in candidates are suddenly winning their elections. Media outlets are calling the two most recent incidents ‘warning shots’ to the two establishment political parties. And while a handful of grassroots candidates in California and Illinois have found a way to circumvent the insurmountable ballot obstacles, one write-in candidate in Pennsylvania just made history.
Take it from a 25-year veteran of grassroots election campaigns – do not run for office as a write-in candidate unless you have absolutely no other avenues available to you. And if you do it, make sure you are registered with the Board of Elections as an official write-in candidate, just in case you actually win.
Give credit to the Peace & Freedom Party of California for setting the precedent. After the state enacted ‘Top Two Voting’ beginning in 2012, every single opposition and independent party candidate in California’s Primary Election that year was denied a ballot position in the November General Election. In every contested race across the state, the election was between a Democrat and a Republican – nobody else. And in 28% of the General Election races, the contest was between two members of the same party.
As we detailed in an Opposition News article earlier this month titled, ‘Peace & Freedom Party fights Top Two Voting in CA’, the party made an end run around the ballot obstacles and ran three candidates as write-ins, and all of them won. The reason they won is because the party scanned the Primary Election candidate line-up and found races where there was only one declared candidate. With only the ‘top two’ vote-getters moving onto the General Election, the Peace and Freedom Party candidates slipped into the November election without being required to collect tens of thousands of petition signatures or pay the state’s hefty poll tax.
Read the full article here.