Facing pressure from both Donald Trump supporters and independent voters turned off by the Republican presidential nominee, Rep. Joe Heck told donors last week he would write in GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on his November ballot.
Unfortunately for the Nevada Republican, his home state is one of seven that does not allow voters to write in a candidate for president of the United States.
Voters in 43 states have the option of writing-in a presidential candidate, should they decide not to cast their vote for any of the candidates who qualified to appear on the ballot. Those 43 states account for 494 electoral votes, more than enough to win the White House if any type of groundswell was able to elevate a late-entering candidate.
But in 34 of those states, write-in candidates must file with a secretary of state’s office — in some cases months before Election Day.
In Texas, anyone running as a write-in candidate must file papers with the state 78 days before November’s election, a deadline that passed on Aug. 23 this year. Illinois demands 61 days notice. In Utah, write-in contenders have to declare themselves 60 days before an election.
And the deadline for Pence, the governor of Indiana, to compete in his home state as a write-in is also long past. The Hoosier State requires write-ins to file a declaration of intent by July 3 — that was weeks before Pence was even named to the Republican ticket.
There is still hope for write-in candidates in other states: Alaska gives such potential pols until five days before the election to file a letter of intent with the state board of elections. Colorado and Connecticut require two-weeks notice. Kansas allows write-ins to file until Oct. 28. In Maryland, the deadline to file is Nov. 2, the Wednesday before Tuesday’s election.
Wyoming law allows a write-in to declare him or herself a candidate two days after an election takes place.
Eight states — Alabama, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont — do not require write-in candidates to file any paperwork. That’s good news for Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), whose write-in vote for Pence will count, even though he has no intention of declaring himself a candidate.
Ayotte is locked in a tough reelection fight with Gov. Maggie Hassan, and recently rescinded her support of Trump.
While voters in Nevada have no write-in option, they can chose a “None of These Candidates” option.
In 2014, almost 30 percent of Democratic voters chose “None of These Candidates” in the gubernatorial primary, more support than any of the eight declared candidates received.
In that case, former state Economic Development Commissioner Bob Goodman, who received 25 percent of the vote, became the party’s nominee before losing badly to Gov. Brian Sandoval (R).
Voters in Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota have no write-in option.
In Mississippi, a write-in vote is counted only in the event that a candidate listed on the ballot dies, resigns, withdraws or is removed.
In the history of American politics, few write-in candidates have succeeded. Only two senators — Strom Thurmond in 1954 and Lisa Murkowski in 2010 — have won full terms as write-in candidates. No House member has won a general election campaign as a write-in candidate since Rep. Ron Packard (R-Calif.) won a three-way contest for an open seat in 1982.
No presidential candidate has ever come close to winning the White House — or even any electoral votes — as a write-in candidate, though Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy all won primaries in states where their names did not appear on a ballot.
Most famously, a write-in campaign designed to draft Gen. Dwight Eisenhower into the 1952 Republican presidential contest scored a surprising second-place finish in Minnesota’s presidential primary — 108,000 Minnesotans wrote in Eisenhower’s name, compared with 129,000 who voted for Gov. Harold Stassen, whose name was printed on the ballot. Eisenhower’s surprise showing, weeks before he formally jumped into the race, was dubbed the Minnesota Miracle.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has had surprising success as a write-in candidate, even when he was already on the ballot. Sanders received more votes than anyone running in Democratic primaries in 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006.
He declined the Democratic nomination each time, opting instead to run as an independent.