Write-ins allow for voters’ freedom of expression

Having been elected National Basketball Coach of the Year and with his teams named 185 times to The Associated Press Top 10, Roy Williams knows a thing or two about the power of the ballot.

But the two votes he received in August for a seat in the Kansas House of Representatives from a Republican voter in the 46th District, which includes the Kansas University campus, and a Democrat in the 45th District could be the least important of them all.

The man’s got enough work to do in Allen Fieldhouse without worrying about the Statehouse in Topeka.

“I’m not running, I’ll tell you that,” Williams said with a laugh. “That shows how much people love Kansas basketball; that’s what it tells you.”

Williams, KU’s revered men’s basketball coach, ranks among the dozens of unwitting candidates to garner write-in votes this election season. A handful of others are mounting serious campaigns to be penciled onto ballots and into office.

Tuesday’s general election promises to throw dozens more names into the mix, with offices ranging from township clerk to U.S. senator at stake and voters free to vote for anyone or anything.

‘All about expression’

“It’s all about expression,” said Karen Exon, a professor and chairwoman of the department of history, political science and sociology at Baker University who follows voter behavior. “People just express things differently.”

During the August primary, Douglas County voters cast write-ins for more than two dozen people to run against incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. Among the prospective candidates: Mark Mangino, KU head football coach; Robert Hemenway, KU chancellor; and Mark Creamer, coordinator of “honk for hemp” rallies at Ninth and Massachusetts streets.

Roberts, with a comfortable 67-point lead in The World Company’s latest poll, doesn’t read much into the results.

“Some of these folks were expressing, maybe with sense of humor, their dissatisfaction with the status quo, and they’re entitled to do that,” Roberts said. “You don’t want a situation as an elected official where everybody agrees with you. You can’t be 100 percent right.

“In some ways a strong write-in candidate can signal to an elected official, ‘Hey, wait a minute. You better do some more listening.'”

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Sandy Praeger, Republican candidate for state insurance commissioner, are two candidates whose names will be printed on ballots in Tuesday's election. Some voters, however, decide to take matters into their own hands and write in their pick for public office.

He knows his history: In 1980, Roberts actually lost potential votes in southwest Kansas to Joe Skeen, a successful write-in candidate for U.S. Congress from a nearby district in New Mexico. Skeen beat the odds and turned out to be among Roberts’ best friends in the U.S. House.

“It is a very legitimate avenue, a very reasonable avenue a very American avenue for people to express their opinions,” Roberts said. “Only in America.”

Ottawa write-in

Like Skeen, Ottawa businessman Dennis Woolman is hoping to grab a slice of the American dream by waging a write-in campaign for a seat on the Franklin County Commission.

“I feel like the voters need another option,” he said.

Woolman, a Republican, is an incumbent, having been appointed in August to finish an unexpired commission term. He hadn’t considered making a run until after the primary, when farmer and retired banker Donald Hay finished first.

Now Woolman is spending $2,000 to put out yard signs, mail postcards and print brochures instructing voters how and where to write his name on the ballot.

“It’s just intent it doesn’t have to be right,” Woolman said, referring to election law that allows names to be misspelled. “It’s an easy name to remember: Wool-man. All you have to do is think about it for a second.”

Write-in candidates even formal ones with signs, advertisements and Web sites still face formidable odds come election time, said Patty Jaimes, Douglas County clerk. It’s easier for voters to consider a name that’s already printed and in front of them, because all they need to do is darken a circle next to it.

But that doesn’t mean such candidates are hopeless, she said, especially in races where the number of voters is small and the local familiarity high.

“We’ve had people win write-ins for precinct committeepeople and township clerks and things like that,” Jaimes said.

Rep. Bugs Bunny?

Jaimes also has faced the daunting task of counting votes for less-than-serious write-ins. In the August primary, voters cast ballots for Minnie and Mickey Mouse, Abe Lincoln, Wonder Woman, Harriet Tubman and Bugs Bunny.

One Democrat even penciled in McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food chain, for state Rep. Tom Sloan’s seat in the Kansas House.

“Sometimes the vote is a form of protest,” said Exon, the political science professor at Baker. “For some it’s a political statement. Sometimes they’re doing it as a joke or a prank.

“I guess it’s part of our history of wanting to fly in the face of authority.”

Some recipients of write-in votes consider the practice a squandered opportunity and shirked responsibility.

“I think they’re wasting their votes,” said KU Provost David Shulenburger, who garnered a vote for the Senate. “It doesn’t really help the process all that much. Why vote if you’re going to completely waste your vote? This is too serious a process to do that.”

Added Mangino, who would rather focus on football games than ponder the meaning of a Senate vote: “We ought to focus on people who are legitimate candidates, who can make our city and state who can continue to make our city and state great places to live.”

State Sen. Sandy Praeger, R-Lawrence, said she appreciated getting a write-in nod for U.S. Senate, but she’d rather see the voter focus on what’s most important: Darkening the oval next to her name Tuesday in the race for state insurance commissioner.

“I need every vote I can get,” Praeger said.