You always see the little box on your ballot, but do you ever write anyone in? Probably not. There’s a reason for that, but it’s important to know that there’s a lot of people who try to win using a write-in campaign because they don’t have a lot of money to formally file for office. They don’t have the time to petition either. Not a lot of political consultants will offer you their strategy on how to do this, but I will.
Since I operate and live in Oregon, this article will assume Oregon election laws (which are surprisingly loose).
Step 1: Get some money
Interestingly enough, you don’t necessarily have to file for office to operate a Political Action Committee (PAC). PACs are technically what candidates operate with to report campaign finance transactions. That said, you will need a bank account that will allow your PAC to operate with a business account. Please follow your state’s guidelines for setting these up.
Now that you’ve got an account to work with, it’s time to try to get some money in it. You could put a little into it yourself, but remember the saying that’s often thrown around: If you’re funding your own campaign, you’re doing it wrong. This isn’t entirely true (e.g. Donald Trump), but it’s good advice not to financially strain yourself too much just to run for office. Just remember that going back isn’t exactly an option if you actually win by write-ins.
Step 2: Obtain a voter record
In Oregon, anybody who pays $500 to the Secretary of State’s office can obtain a record of registered voters. It typically has names, dates of birth, addresses, and whether or not they returned their ballot in the past few election cycles (General, primary, and special). This is when you can start trying to target your potential voters.
Do you want to win over the regular voters who “always vote?” Perhaps you’re looking to rile up the apathetic voters who haven’t voted in the last two cycles. You might do best with a mix of the two kinds of voters! Since you’ll have birth years, you could even target by age.
Step 3: Upload your targeted list to Google Maps
Something a lot of people don’t typically utilize properly is Google Maps. The nice thing about it is that you can save a copy of your edited list of potential voters and then find where the most dense area in your district is. I find it useful to save my target lists by county. Once you’ve got everything uploaded, you can open your new map in My Maps, which gives you a search bar to drop pins on certain landmarks, such as schools, parks, and even the new Dutch Bros that just opened up.
Once you’ve found your target areas in the district you’re running in, you can decide between targeted mailing or direct mail with the postal service. In fact, the postal service claims you don’t need an “expensive” address list. $500 might seem like a lot, but it’s actually fairly low cost compared to political consultants.
Step 4: Get your messaging right
This is where things tend to get a little tricky. If you’re doing the direct mail route, you’re going to need a universal message that everyone would agree with (good luck with that). If you’ve got a handy voter list, you can tailor your campaign’s messaging to each party you’re trying to win the nomination of (if you’re trying to be a fusion candidate). I only have one golden rule for tailoring platform messaging like this: Don’t lie about your positions. It’s one thing to omit some parts of your platform that Democrats might not like. It’s a totally different thing to lie through your teeth about it.
Libertarians are good examples of tailored messaging for cross-nominations. For example, if there’s no Republican running for State Representative, you could send Republicans a postcard outlining how you want to get government spending under control, eliminate regulations that cause governmental bloat, and how you believe in school choice. However, it’s often best to omit the fact that you want to end the war on drugs.
If you’re a Libertarian trying to win the Democratic Party’s nomination this way, you could outline your platform to end the war on drugs, stop giving big corporations unfair subsidies, and how you want to make sure everyone has a shot to climb to the top. Just don’t tell them you think taxation is theft or that you think nobody should have subsidies.
Step 5: Put your plan in motion
Once you’ve got everything down and ready to go, put your plan in motion! Maybe you’ll win (it happens) and maybe you’ll lose (often the case). Either way, you will ensure that more people will know you down the road in the event that there’s a vacancy in the primary. You also may be wondering why anyone would go to all this trouble just for a little nomination.
One strategy that could be used in Oregon is to eliminate your potential competition and keep the ballot to yourself and a write-in box. The way to do that is through “fusion” candidates, where a candidate who is likely to win their own primary runs a write-in campaign to win their opposing party’s nomination. A lot of Democrats in Portland use this strategy in legislative races and they often win.
There’s two choices you have in Oregon when you win such write-in campaigns: You can file to have the extra nominations show up or you can choose to not file for that nomination and make it appear as if nobody else tried to run. It’s a dirty tactic, but it’s effective. Perhaps this is just one reason out of many that Democrats have maintained power for the better part of the past 30+ years.
Summary (and bonus step)
And that’s how you do it in just five easy steps! Fundraise, get a list of voters, use a mapping tool, figure out your messaging, and actually follow through with your plan. There may be some political consultants that will comment and try to tell you this doesn’t actually work. I wouldn’t be surprised if they either weren’t from Oregon or didn’t do much work in my state. To help ensure you’re securing a nomination, I’ve decided to throw in a bonus step.
Bonus Step 6: Obtain confirmation of support
Imagine that you’ve done your proper research (hint hint) and found out that winners of previous write-in campaigns were successful with just 15 votes. Now that you’ve got your goal, it’s time to track it as much as possible. Add a form to your website (another hint) that records responses. Google Forms is perfect for this. On your postcard (and website), find a space to include a call to action, preferably something along the lines of “Like what you see? Let me know I have your support by visiting [website]!”
Before you tell me this will never work, it will work fairly well if you do your targeting right. Even if you use the postal service’s direct mail service, you can target by sending targeted postcards per route, sometimes for less than 20¢ per mailpiece. Each order must be 5,000 addresses or less. Do what makes the most sense for your campaign. Just remember that the incumbent will likely have one hell of a warchest.