Replacement Candidates And Write-Ins For November

There seems to be a bit of confusion or uncertainty about this year's general election ballot. The problems: write-ins and replacement candidates in partisan elections.

Normally, for partisan elections in November, the ballot lists the nominees of each of the approved political parties of North Carolina: Democratic, Libertarian and Republican. Those nominees are determined by the outcome of the party primaries held last May 8 for contested nominations. For contests where a candidate filed for a party but had no primary opponent, that candidate becomes his party's nominee.

Note that the party is the nominating entity. Unaffiliated voters are allowed to vote in a party's primary only if that party's State Executive Committee so provides by resolution delivered to the State Board of Elections by December 1 of the year prior to the primary election. In recent years, both Democratic and Republican parties have allowed unaffiliated voters to participate in their primary elections.

Winners of primary elections or uncontested filers will have their names printed on the general election ballot for partisan contests. Unaffiliated candidates can also be added to the ballot by petition (2% of voters for Governor in most recent election for statewide office, or 4% for district or county offices.) These candidates must be registered voters, but need not be registered as unaffiliated - they just aren't the official candidate of their party.

Just to make it interesting, it is also possible to qualify as a write-in candidate for the general election by petition. That takes 500, 250 or 100 petition signatures depending on the contest. When a person qualifies as a write-in candidate, a write-in line is added to the ballot, but only write-ins for the approved candidate will be counted.

There will also be a write-in line for every contest in a non-partisan election.

What if, after the primary,  a candidate dies, withdraws or becomes ineligible? In that case, the designated Committee of the Candidate's party appoints a replacement. If practical, the Board of Elections with jurisdiction over the ballot item will reprint the ballot. If that board determines it is impractical to reprint the ballot, then the original candidate's name remains on the ballot and all votes cast for the original candidate are counted for the replacement candidate.

This is all spelled out in North Carolina General Statutes.

This year, we have write-in lines for President and Governor. We also have one candidate who has withdrawn and whose party has appointed a replacement. Every vote for the withdrawn candidate will count as a vote for the replacement candidate.

This might or might not be the way it was where you come from, but it's that way in North Carolina.