Dear Editor,

District 2 is now a competitive election and soon district 3 will have a competitive candidate, but what happens when the choice of candidates is not the choice of a majority of voters? Now that would be an excellent Diablo View for Express research and Dolores’ capable engagement of readers, don’t you think?

In the past, mostly in humor among neighbors, there has been a movement to “Vote for OTHER” covered in postings to the Express Forum. If you review CoCoVote results for past elections you will find our candidate, as “OTHER” listed for all the votes cast for write-ins not registered or not gaining enough votes to be listed separately. After the Alaska Senate race was decided in favor of a write-in candidate last year, humorists throughout Contra Costa County are considering making “OTHER” their candidate to write-in in nearly all races. It makes the county election office jobs easier because they already have the category and it would be a simple effort to account for a large or small write-in vote for “OTHER.”

Dolores could add to her Diablo View on voters’ choices by examining “what if OTHER won?” Simply, a non-registered write-in cannot win the election and votes only count that are cast for registered candidates. But what if a candidate got a minority of votes to be elected when OTHER actually won the election? It certainly would not be a mandate for that candidate if voters illustrate that they would have preferred someone else. It takes us all back to the ballot measure by Al Shugart of Seagate Fame that wanted to add “none of the above” to the list of candidates in California. That measure failed but “OTHER” lives on.

Let’s ask your readers, “Would you vote for OTHER?”