Write-in candidates face big hurdles

MARIAVILLE – Perhaps the only thing harder to find than J. Martin Vachon’s home – three miles down a maze of mostly unmarked gravel roads – will be his name on the June primary ballot for governor.

It won’t be there.

But if the 69-year-old Republican hopeful, one of four who will be vying for the GOP nomination on June 13, has his way, he will convince voters to write it in themselves.

“It’s in big, bold letters at the top,” said Vachon from his Hancock County home, pointing to the instructions he’s planning to hand out to voters on precisely how to write his name (and town) on the ballot.

But using even the biggest, boldest letters to explain the seemingly simple process, write-in candidates such as Vachon have an almost impossible task ahead of them, history has shown.

In major Maine races – and most not-so-major races – write-ins have never taken more than a tiny fraction of the vote.

“It’s really frustrating and I would not recommend it,” said David Nealley, who last year ran a write-in candidacy for the Bangor City Council.

Although unsuccessful, Nealley’s campaign fared better than most. A former city councilor with a fair amount of name recognition, he was able to get more than 1,200 people to vote for him by making the extra effort to write his name on the ballot.

Still, as with the most widely known write-in candidates, he discovered that name recognition doesn’t mean much when there’s no name on the ballot to recognize.

“I thought I got creamed,” said Nealley, who placed a distant fourth in the four-way race. “The bottom line is you have to be on the ballot.”

Nealley has been on the ballot before. So has Vachon.

In 2001, Nealley placed second in the council race, earning one of the three open seats.

In 1982, Vachon, then an electrician living in Sanford, ran for governor as an independent and collected more than 4,000 signatures to earn a spot on the general election ballot. However, when the results were in, he received only about 2,500 votes,

An 18-year-old high school student in Michigan gained national attention when his write-in candidacy ousted the incumbent mayor of his hometown last year.

But those stories are few, and mainly limited to local races in small towns where there are no other candidates, elections officials say.

Far more often, local ballot clerks see write-ins such as Mickey Mouse and Santa Claus – two of the most popular, they said – along with the occasional Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 1992, a certain Texas billionaire was the favorite of one midcoast voter.

“I once had someone write in Ross Perot for every single race,” said Belfast City Clerk Roberta Fogg. “I guess they wanted to make sure he won something.”

All humor aside, voter dissatisfaction with a particular slate of candidates is a serious issue, said William H. White, director of the group Voters for None of the Above.

White’s group, a one-man show based in Brewster, Mass., supports adoption of “voter consent” laws that would allow voters to choose “None of the Above” and force a new election with different candidates if the majority so chose.

“It opens the system a bit more and really gives voters the final say,” said White, although dubbing his efforts thus far to enact such legislation a “dismal failure.”

Currently, only Nevada has a version of voter consent, but without the ability to force a new vote. Instead, if None of the Above receives the most votes – which has happened just a handful of times since the law’s adoption in 1976 – the next top vote getter is declared the winner.

While the NOTA option – as elections officials there call it – might not win, it often does very well. In the 2002 Nevada governor’s race, it received nearly 24,000 votes, placing third in the seven-way race.

Back in Maine, Vachon’s write-in bid is not based on dissatisfaction with the other GOP candidates. Despite not being on the ballot – and all the challenges it presents – he said he hopes to continue to talk about his ideas to those who will listen.

“I’m not going away,” he said.