What do Eisenhower and Lisa Murkowski have in common?
They both had success as write-in candidates. Eisenhower won the 1952 Massachusetts Republican presidential primary as a write in, and in last week’s election Lisa Murkowski may have won Alaska’s Senate race (pending final verification). According to the reference book, Elections A-Z (3rd ed.): “Voters who opt to write in the name of a candidate usually do so because they are not satisfied with any of the official candidates who qualified for the ballot… on rarer occasions…because the candidate entered the contest too late to qualify for the ballot.”
The State of Georgia has also contributed to election Write-In history. In the mid-1960’s the Georgia Democratic Party Forum, a splinter of the state’s Democratic Party supported gubernatorial candidate Ellis Arnall in his unsuccessful 1966 write-in bid for Office. The Library’s Special Collections & Archives Department has clippings, correspondence, oral histories, and legal materials of the group’s activities. See the collection’s Resource Guide for more information.