As the the dust settles from the municipal elections last week, an interesting story has emerged from the small Nash county town of Dortches, NC. A local farmer, dissatisfied with the choices on the ballot for the town’s Commission, decided to offer himself as a write-in candidate.
Write-in candidacies rarely are successful. There are two main obstacles that have be overcome:
- Voters have to know that there is a write-in candidate, and;
- Voters have to accurately spell the write-in candidate’s name.
Neither is these is an easy task for a first time candidate named Brett Sondergard but, he emerged victorious on Tuesday after the ballots were counted.
So how did he do it? The first thing that needs to be considered is the size of the electorate. Dortches has a population of under 1000 people and only 68 people voted in the election out of 612 registered voters. Sondergard mailed out letters to the voters and stood outside of the only polling place and worked the voters as the came in to cast their ballots.
Even with all of the efforts by Sondergard, what motivated Dortches voters to fire a commissioner? Check out this article from the Rocky Mount Telegram for the background.
Even though write-in candidacies rarely win, its good to see people make their choices in an election. Now, if only ACORN could have been in Dortches….
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