What You Need to Know About Writing in a Candidate for President and Why Writing in Pence Could Backfire
There’s a lot of talk about writing in a candidate for president for the 2016 election, as many, including me, are unhappy with our two major party choices. In fact, several Congressmen, including Senator John McCain and New Jersey Rep. Frank LoBiondo, said they would write in a candidate such as Mike Pence.
Did you know that your write in vote may not count, and if you write in Mike Pence in Indiana where I live and who I think would be a much better choice, you might actually be voting FOR TRUMP! Make sure you know how to properly write in a candidate so your vote counts!
Here’s what you need to know about writing in a candidate for president. This is based on information I gathered from talking with the Indiana Secretary of State’s Election Commission office, but keep in mind it could be different in your state. Call your state’s election commission to confirm your options.
- In Indiana, if you write in a candidate, your vote WILL NOT count unless you are voting for someone who has officially applied to run as a write-in candidate. Here are our Indiana options.
- If you write in someone who’s NOT registered as a write-in candidate for president, your vote will not count. So consider it a protest vote.
- Planning to write in Mike Pence? He is NOT registered to run for president in any state. So that’s likely a no count in most states. According to the Indiana Secretary of State, it’s possible they may actually include write-in votes for Pence to be a vote FOR the Trump-Pence ticket. So your write-in could end up supporting Trump. That is certainly not my intention. They indicated they have yet to determine how such a write-in will be handled. Could you imagine the extra votes that could unintentionally accrue for Trump? That could be a HUGE issue of contention as votes are tallied if Trump wins.
- You can also choose not to vote for any particular race, including president.
- The Indiana Secretary of State’s office indicated that write-ins are also largely subject to the discretion of the precinct manager, so there could be much debate, reviewing, recounting there, as well as to what counts, what doesn’t. Recall the hanging chad incident anyone?
- Remember, you are actually voting for electors to choose your candidate, not the candidates themselves.
Write-ins are going to be a huge issue in this race and I predict potential chaos in correctly counting and allotting votes, especially those write-ins for Pence. Make sure you know what you are doing when you write someone in and what that really means.
Spread the word! We need to be fully informed this election!
For 2,000 years Catholic Church has taught “No salvation outside the Catholic Church” This is is a dogma can never change. You have been telling others they don’t have to be catholic to be saved and this is heresy. Of course this makes you are a heretic and not a catholic. Catholics are required to know the faith. Paul vi destroyed the mass and the ordination of priests in 1969 and they are invalid. Go to MHFM these Benedictine brothers will help you. Best not to linger.
Hi Gerald, I wanted to let you know that I reaffirmed the notion that Catholics do not teach that if you are not a member of the Catholic Church you will go to Hell. I reviewed this with my parish priest recently, and while I know that he is not be all, end all, he is a well-studied man in the Catholic faith who is knowledgeable in Its teachings. According to him, in the Catechism where it says “there is no salvation outside of the Catholic church,” it is referring to “Catholic” meaning universal — in other words the universal Christian faith — not Catholic as in our specific faith in the midst of Christianity. He said that many have a partial version of Christianity (Protestants, etc.) and while we believe we have the FULLEST version of the faith Jesus taught – they are not excluded from heaven for not having that full vision. Again, only God knows who goes to heaven and hell and we should not presume (in my mind at least) to judge for Him. But perhaps we shall agree to disagree; I just wanted to let you know where my comments came from :). God bless you and I hope you had a Merry Christmas! Let’s bring as many people as we can into the fullness of the faith!