ron paul write-in campaign
I am so irked about this. There is this huge write-in campaign going on all over the internet for Ron Paul for the November election. A simple search and you’ll see the talk.
Personally, I was going to do this very thing for several reasons: there is no major party candidate I could ever support; I love Ron Paul; the Ron Paul name means something; and I want to be a part of this “Revolution” of sorts, which is attached to this “Ron Paul” name.
However, in Missouri, write-in candidates must file a “declaration of intent” with the proper authorities by a specific time, in order to be an official write-in candidate. This means if the person written in has not filed this, then a vote for this person will be filed into some filing cabinet somewhere and never counted. Candidates written in are compared against a list of those who have filed the proper paper work– those on that list are counted and those that are not, don’t. (Which means all these Mickey Mouse votes for the however-many-years, have never flied in Missouri, well, not unless Mr. Mouse filed a “declaration of intent”.)
A “write-in candidate” is a person:
*whose name is not printed on the ballot; and
*who has filed a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for election to office with the proper election authority prior to 5:00 p.m. on the second Friday immediately preceding the election day. It is not necessary to file a declaration of intent if there are no candidates on the ballot for that office.
The second problem is that in Missouri, Ron Paul can’t file this “declaration of intent”.
If a candidate files for nomination to an office and is not nominated at a primary election, that candidate cannot file a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for the same office at the general election.
So, unless Ron Paul gets on the ballot in November by winning the GOP nomination in September, which I know is unlikely, I will not be able to vote for Ron Paul if I want my vote to count.
I got this information here: http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/writein.asp
Now, there is some confusion about all of this. I’ve seen people say that in a Presidential election, these rules don’t apply, because one is voting for electors, not a candidate. There does appear to be some stipulation for the Presidential race on that link, but I have to be honest and say the language is confusing and now I’m not quite sure either way. So, here’s hoping that this is the case, though I have my doubts.
If you are interesting in writing in a candidate yourself, you might want to check your specific state rules, because there are other states also like this, though not all of them.
Assuming the rules do apply in this case, the choice I have now is to either actually, seriously have my vote not count (and not the cliches on throwing away votes by not voting “big two” or talk of machine or human error) and write him in anyway, or vote for the Libertarian or Constitution Party candidates– Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin, respectively. I have to be honest, I’m not that thrilled with my choices, mainly since I was really hoping to vote for Ron Paul!! A vote for either one of these two would not be a vote of “lesser of evils”, so it would still be a vote of support and integrity, but I have a certain excitement for Ron Paul that I do not have for them, so it’s a bit disappointing.
As a side-tangent, it also irks me that this website, the official GOP site of Missouri, has McCain listed as the GOP Presidential candidate despite the fact that there is not one, and will not be one until September 1-4 at the GOP convention in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. That’s how it works. That is the purpose of this convention– to nominate an official candidate and to adopt the party platform and rules for the election cycle. Even if McCain had every single vote in the country and Paul had zero, McCain would still not be the official candidate, yet.
On a related note, I burnt my tongue two days ago and it still hurts.
“On a related note, I burnt my tongue two days ago and it still hurts.”
Friction burns maybe?
June 11th, 2008 at 11:33 pmwow. never knew there were so many rules for the write in!
June 12th, 2008 at 5:27 am