Come the November general election, Georgia voters retain the rare, often overlooked, and decidedly uphill option of writing in the name of someone—or sometimes some thing (think “Mickey Mouse” or “A. Rock”)—beyond traditional Republican, Democrat or Independent candidates on the ballot.
Write-in voting has a long tradition in federal, state and local elections, though now only officially in a general election.
From the voter’s perspective, use of the write-in option has over time become quite rare: most often as a protest vote, or more typically as pushback for lack of knowledge about any official candidates in an unfamiliar down-ballot race, say, for commissioner of labor or commissioner of insurance.
Gone are the days when election watchers could amuse themselves with the write-in vote totals for cartoon characters or “None of the above.” Today, such votes are not even tallied. The reason: gradual changes in voting technology and a specific episode in the state’s history.
Essentially, casting a write-in vote has become more cumbersome. In the days of paper ballots, it was relatively easy for a voter to write in a substitute name. However, with the advent of lever-operated voting machines and then today’s electronic touchscreen ballots, it requires some determination and a certain amount of technological prowess just to find the correct space, use the correct format, and type in the correct name.
Plus, changes in Georgia state law regarding write-in voting came in the aftermath of the 1966 governor’s race. The Democratic primary featured Lester Maddox, former Gov. Ellis Arnall, and a young South Georgia state senator named Jimmy Carter. Maddox won the nomination for the Democrats, with the Republican Party fielding its first credible statewide candidate in nearly a century: Bo Callaway, of LaGrange’s cotton mill family.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorially backed the progressive Arnall in the primary but would not back the segregationist Maddox in the general election. Instead, articles in the paper noted the possibility of a write-in campaign for Arnall, who kept his distance from such a movement.
Still, write-in ballots for Arnall eventually amounted to six percent of the vote, which was more than enough to keep Callaway (48 percent) or Maddox (46 percent) from reaching the necessary 50-percent-plus-one threshold to win outright.
Regardless, the Democrat-controlled legislature named Maddox the next governor and to combat any similar last-minute, write-in campaigns for the future, laws were passed to require a notice of candidacy be published at least six weeks prior to a general election for any write-in votes to count.