After Tom DeLay dropped out last week, the Texas GOP was forced to try a Hail Mary, throwing their support behind a write-in candidate. But the candidate’s name — Shelley Sekula-Gibbs — may be a problem.
In short, the Republican strategy is now this: tens of thousands of GOP voters will go to the polls on November 7, ignore the names printed on the ballot, and write in a hyphenated name of 20 characters (counting spaces). A long shot, for sure — as the AP noted, only four candidates in U.S. electoral history have ever succeeded with a write-in campaign.
But it gets trickier. Voters in Texas’ 22nd District will use the eSlate electronic voting machine. I decided to take it for a test drive and experience the thrill of democracy myself — which you can do on Hart Intercivic’s website.
Uh oh! But not to worry – we were assured by Josh Allen of Harter Intercivic that the actual machines have 25 characters, not a mere 18 as in the demo above. So her name will come in just under the limit.
The eSlate machine does lack a keyboard, however — users roll a trackwheel to choose letters on a screen. And unfortunately for Dr. S-G, there’s no hyphen. So writing her name in is a bit of a chore. Judgments as to spelling will be made by “the counting judge,” according to Amy Mitchell, an attorney with the Texas Secretary of State’s office; such judgments tend to be lenient — basically, if it “looks like” the name, it’s counted as the name. Serious write-in candidates often lead to recounts, she said. Misspellings may well be the hanging chad of this election season.
Ms. Mitchell didn’t know that the eSlate machine lacked a hyphen, but did say that âIf you had most of the name without the hyphen, I donât think the counting judge would discount the vote just because you didnât have a hyphen that wasnât on the program.â
Keep in mind that control of Congress may well hinge on this race. Which means the direction of the country could rest on whether or not enough Texas Republicans can remember a 20-letter hyphenated name and spell it using an awkward trackwheel device.
Jeff Hughes contributed reporting for this article.
