If you can’t bring yourself to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in November, you can always write in your presidential candidate of choice. Just don’t expect it to count. Write-in votes for president aren’t counted in Virginia unless the candidate has declared the candidacy and filed a slate of electors with state elections officials. “There is a write-in space on the ballot, but unless the candidate has adhered to proper procedures” as set forth in Section 24.2-644 of the Code of Virginia, “those write-ins don’t count,” said Martin Mash, confidential policy adviser to the Virginia Department of Elections. Under section 24.2-644 (C) of the Code of Virginia, “Write-in votes for president and vice president shall be counted only for candidates who have filed a joint declaration of intent to be write-in candidates for the offices with the secretary of the State Board (of Elections) not less than ten days before the date of the presidential election.”
A write-in candidate for president must file a list of 13 electors — the equivalent of Virginia’s 13 electoral votes — one for each of the 11 congressional districts, plus two for the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
About two-thirds of the states have such formal requirements for presidential write-in campaigns, said Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News, an elections website in San Francisco. After all, “the state needs to know” who the candidate’s electors are, just in case the write-in candidate wins.
That’s unlikely, but in recent years several long-shot presidential candidates have gone to the trouble of formally mounting certified write-in bids in Virginia. Their results are itemized in tallies recorded by the Federal Election Commission.
Full Article: Planning to cast a write-in for president? Don’t expect it to count in Va. – Richmond Times-Dispatch: Virginia Politics.