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HAVE YOU EVER written in the name of a candidate in a general election? We never tried it, although we can remember races when "Donald Duck" would have made a better choice than the names on the printed ballot.
To write in a name on Election Day, you must navigate the crowded ballot and find the exact column for the office, a complicated enough task even when you intend to vote for someone whose name does appear on the ballot. Then you must slide up the slot above that column and write in the name of the candidate, using both a first and last name that come pretty close to the way the candidate spells it. And this assumes you have a pen handy, or that someone has not walked off with the pencil placed in the booth for write-ins, or that the pencil has not rolled under the booth and that you can physically reach the slot where you write in the name.
These barriers help explain why candidates with ballot lines have little to fear from write-in challengers except in races where only a handful of people turn out. So what should the public make of the race in Schodack, where Ray Lemka, a retired farmer and former Town Board member running for town supervisor, received 1,711 votes-all of them write-ins?
Mr. Lemka lost to his opponent, incumbent Supervisor Beth Secor, by a mere 11 votes after county elections officials counted all the absentee ballots.
No one can remember when a candidate received so many hand-written votes. And the feat looks all the more impressive when you consider that Ms. Secor had three ballot lines-Republican, Conservative and Independence-and Mr. Lemka had only about three weeks to mount his challenge and educate voters about how to write in his name.
Before the final count, Mr. Lemka said he would challenge the result in court if he lost, because at least one polling place ran out of paper for write-in ballots, and poll officials told voters to come back later. Experience says that judges seldom overturn an election on technical grounds, but with a vote this close and the machine failure so critical to the outcome, we hope Mr. Lemka does get a second chance.
Under other circumstances, we might fault Rensselaer County for failing to prepare adequately, but even ardent Lemka supporters couldn't have anticipated this big a response.
Some will say that winning, even if by a single vote, is all that matters. And Ms. Secor will now have two years to re-establish voter confidence in her and her administration. But think of the humiliation this represents for someone who ran unopposed two years ago and whose supporters spiked Mr. Lemka's chance to appear on the ballot after town Democrats chose him as their candidate.
Assuming she prevails, maybe Ms. Secor will realize that the way she goes about running the town has alienated the voters of Schodack. She gives herself raises while taxpayers get squeezed, launches controversial projects that require far more discussion and generally acts as if she governs by some right of royalty rather than by the consent of the governed.
But while we hope Ms. Secor will learn from this experience, her statements immediately after the election and following the final count would make any reasonable person wonder whether she understands what has happened. At first, she accused Mr. Lemka and his supporters of mounting a campaign of "fear and distortions," a wildly fearful and distorted charge unaccompanied by anything to support it.
When she received confirmation of her victory, she acknowledged her campaign had not "effectively conveyed our message," adding that she now "will be setting the record straight."
That misses the point. Her record doesn't need correction, she does. Schodack government should function in a responsive, transparent and fiscally disciplined manner. But Ms. Secor has presided over an astounding growth in the local tax burden. And that very effectively conveyed her message. The voters feel its impact, and they don't like it.
The Independent 2007
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