David Simon Journalism Did he go to school for journalism? I don't know. What was his first experience with journalism? Upon leaving college, Simon worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995. What was his next job? Simon was a union captain when the writing staff went on strike What was his next journalism experience? Simon said that since leaving the newspaper business he has become more cynical about the power of journalism. Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? He spent most of his career covering the crime beat.
Who did he write the articles for?
Who did David Simon write articles for?
Upon leaving college, Simon worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995. He spent most of his career covering the crime beat. A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was "God's work". Simon says that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by the Washington Post's coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience. Later in his career he aimed to tell the best possible story without "cheating it".  Simon was a union captain when the writing staff went on strike in 1987 over benefit cuts. He remained angry after the strike ended and began to feel uncomfortable in the writing room. He searched for a reason to justify a leave of absence and settled on the idea of writing a novel. "I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun," says Simon.  In an interview in Reason in 2004, Simon said that since leaving the newspaper business he has become more cynical about the power of journalism. "One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage," said Simon. "I've become increasingly cynical about the ability of daily journalism to effect any kind of meaningful change. I was pretty dubious about it when I was a journalist, but now I think it's remarkably ineffectual." In 1988, disillusioned, Simon took a year's leave to go into the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit to write a book. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
David Judah Simon (born February 9, 1960) is an American author, journalist, and television writer and producer best known for his work on The Wire (2002–08).

He worked for The Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years (1982–95), wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991), and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997) with Ed Burns. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner (2000).

He was the creator, executive producer, head writer, and show runner for all five seasons of the HBO television series The Wire (2002–2008). He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into a television mini-series, and served as the show runner for the project. He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011. Simon also created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which aired for four seasons. Following Treme, Simon wrote the HBO mini-series Show Me a Hero with journalist William F. Zorzi, a colleague first at The Baltimore Sun and again later on The Wire. Simon and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos reunited to create original series The Deuce. The drama about the New York porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and co-producer James Franco, and aired from 2017 to 2019. Simon's next series, The Plot Against America, debuted in 2020.

Early life and education
Simon was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy Simon (née Ligeti), a homemaker, and Bernard Simon, a former journalist and then public relations director for B'nai B'rith for 20 years. Simon was raised in a Jewish family, and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. His family roots are in Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Slovakia (his maternal grandfather had changed his surname from "Leibowitz" to "Ligeti"). He has a brother, Gary Simon, and a sister, Linda Evans, who died in 1990.

In March 1977, when Simon was still in high school, Simon's father was one of a group of over 140 people held hostage (and later released) in Washington, D.C. by former national secretary of the Nation of Islam Hamaas Abdul Khaalis in the Hanafi Siege.

Simon graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and wrote for the school newspaper, The Tattler. In 1983, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. While at college he wrote and was Editor for The Diamondback, and became friends with contemporary David Mills.

Career

Journalism
Upon leaving college, Simon worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995. Simon was hired by the Baltimore Sun for a piece he wrote about Lefty Driesell, who was then the men's basketball coach at the University of Maryland. Driesell had been extremely frustrated that one of his players was suspended from playing for sexual impropriety and called the victim, threatening to destroy her reputation if she did not withdraw her complaint. This was all done while the university administration was listening to the call, but they did nothing. Lefty Driesell was later given a 5-year contract and, in 2018, he was inducted into the ACC Hall of Fame.

Simon spent most of his career covering the crime beat. A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was "God's work". Simon says that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by The Washington Posts coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience.

Simon was a union captain when the writing staff went on strike in 1987 over benefit cuts. He remained angry after the strike ended and began to feel uncomfortable in the writing room. He searched for a reason to justify a leave of absence and settled on the idea of writing a novel. "I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun," says Simon.

In 1988, disillusioned, Simon took a year's leave to go into the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit to write a book.

Book

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

Simon's leave of absence from The Sun resulted in his first book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991). The book was based on his experiences shadowing the Baltimore Police Department homicide unit during 1988. The idea came from a conversation on Christmas Eve 1985 in the unit office, where Det. Bill Lansey told him, "If someone just wrote down what happens in this place for one year, they'd have a goddamn book." Simon approached the police department and the editors of the paper to receive approval. The detectives were initially slow to accept him, but he persevered in an attempt to "seem … like part of the furniture". However, he soon ingratiated himself with the detectives, saying in the closing notes of the book, "I shared with the detectives a year's worth of fast-food runs, bar arguments and station house humor: Even for a trained observer, it was hard to remain aloof." During one instance, Simon even assisted with an arrest. Two detectives Simon was riding with pulled their car to a curb to apprehend two suspects, but Detective Dave Brown got his trenchcoat caught in a seat belt when he tried to exit the car. Brown told Simon to assist Detective Terry McLarney himself, and Simon helped apprehend and search one of the suspects.

The book won the 1992 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime book. The Associated Press called it "a true-crime classic". The Library Journal also highly recommended it, and Newsday described it as "one of the most engrossing police procedural mystery books ever written". Simon credits his time researching the book as altering his writing style and informing later work. He learned to be more patient in research and writing, and said a key lesson was not promoting himself but concentrating on his subjects. Simon told Baltimore's City Paper in 2003 that Homicide was not traditional journalism. "I felt Homicide the book and The Corner were not traditional journalism in the sense of coming from some artificially omniscient, objective point of view," said Simon. "They're immersed in the respective cultures that they cover in a way that traditional journalism often isn't."

Television

Homicide: Life on the Street

The publishers of Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets were eager for a screen adaptation and submitted it to numerous directors but there was little interest. Simon suggested that they send the book to Baltimore native and film director Barry Levinson. Levinson's assistant Gail Mutrux enjoyed the book and both she and Levinson became attached as producers. The project became the award-winning TV series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999), on which Simon worked as a writer and producer.

Simon was asked by Mutrux to write the show's pilot episode but declined, feeling he did not have the necessary expertise. He collaborated with his old college friend David Mills to write the season two premiere "Bop Gun". The episode was based on a story by executive producer Tom Fontana and featured Robin Williams in a guest starring role that garnered the actor an Emmy nomination. Simon and Mills won the WGA Award for Best Writing in a Drama for the episode. Simon also received Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award in 2010.

Simon left his job with the Baltimore Sun in 1995 to work full-time on Homicide: Life on the Street during the production of the show's fourth season. Simon wrote the teleplay for the season four episodes "Justice: Part 2" and "Scene of the Crime" (with Anya Epstein). For season five he was the show's story editor and continued to contribute teleplays writing the episodes "Bad Medicine" and "Wu's on First?" (again with Epstein). He was credited as a producer on the show's sixth and seventh seasons. He wrote the teleplays for parts two and three of the sixth-season premiere "Blood Ties" (the latter marking his third collaboration with Epstein) and provided the story for the later sixth-season episodes "Full Court Press" and "Finnegan's Wake" (with James Yoshimura). He provided the story for the seventh season episodes "Shades of Gray" (with Julie Martin), "The Same Coin" (again with Yoshimura) and "Self Defense" (with Eric Overmyer). Simon wrote the story and teleplay for the seventh season episodes "The Twenty Percent Solution" and "Sideshow: Part 2". Simon, Martin and teleplay writer T. J. English won the Humanitas Prize in the 60 minutes category for the episode "Shades of Gray". Simon was nominated for a second WGA Award for Best Writing in a Drama for his work on "Finnegan's Wake" with Yoshimura and Mills (who wrote the teleplay).

Simon has said that he thought the show was a "remarkable drama" but that it did not reflect the book. He has also said that when writing for the show he had to put his experiences of the real detectives aside as the characters became quite different, particularly in their more philosophical approach to the job. Simon said that TV must find shorthand ways of referencing anything real.

The Corner

In 1997 he co-authored, with Ed Burns, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, the true account of a West Baltimore community dominated by a heavy drug market. Simon credits his editor John Sterling with the suggestion that he observe a single drug corner. He took a second leave of absence from the Baltimore Sun in 1993 to research the project. Simon became close to one of his subjects, drug addict Gary McCullough, and was devastated by his death while he was writing the project. Simon says that he approached the research with the abstract idea that his subjects may die because of their addictions but it was not possible to fully prepare for the reality. He remains grateful to his subjects saying "This involved people's whole lives, there's no privacy in it. That was an enormous gift which many, many people gave us. Even the most functional were at war with themselves. But they were not foolish people. And they made that choice."

The Corner was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Simon again returned to his journalism career after finishing the book but felt further changed by his experiences. He said he "was less enamored of the braggadocio, all that big, we're-really-having-an-impact talk" and no longer believed that they were making a difference; he left his job at The Sun within a year for work on NBC's Homicide.

Soon after Homicide concluded Simon co-wrote (with David Mills) and produced The Corner as a six-hour TV miniseries for HBO. The show received three Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries or a Movie, for Simon and Mills.

The Wire

Simon was the creator, show runner, executive producer and head writer of the HBO drama series The Wire. Many of The Wires characters and incidents also came from Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. After the fourth season, Simon signed on to produce the fifth and final season of The Wire, which focused on the role of mass media in society.

Again he worked with Ed Burns on creating the show. Originally they set out to create a police drama loosely based on Burns' experiences when working on protracted investigations of violent drug dealers using surveillance technology. During this time Burns had often faced frustration with the bureaucracy of the police department, which Simon equated with his own ordeals as a police reporter for The Baltimore Sun. Writing against the background of current events, including institutionalized corporate crime at Enron and institutional dysfunction in the Catholic Church, the show became "more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show."

They chose to take The Wire to HBO because of their existing working relationship from The Corner. Owing to its reputation for exploring new areas, HBO was initially dubious about including a cop drama in their lineup, but eventually agreed to produce the pilot after ordering a further two scripts to see how the series would progress. Carolyn Strauss, the president of HBO entertainment, has said that Simon's argument that the most subversive thing HBO could do was invade the networks' "backyard" of police procedurals helped to persuade them.

The theme of institutional dysfunction was expanded across different areas of the city as the show progressed. The second season focused on the death of working-class America through examination of the city ports. The third season "reflects on the nature of reform and reformers, and whether there is any possibility that political processes, long calcified, can mitigate against the forces currently arrayed against individuals." For the fourth season Simon again turned to Burns' experience, this time his second career as a Baltimore public school teacher in examining the theme of education. The fifth season looked at the media, as well as continuing themes such as politics from earlier seasons.

Simon was reunited with his The Corner producers Robert F. Colesberry and Nina K. Noble on The Wire. Simon credits Colesberry for achieving the show's realistic visual feel because of his experience as a director. They recruited Homicide star and director Clark Johnson to helm the pilot episode. The completed pilot was given to HBO in November 2001. Johnson returned to direct the second episode when the show was picked up, and would direct the series finale as well, in addition to starring in the fifth season.

Simon approached acclaimed crime fiction authors to write for The Wire. He was recommended the work of George Pelecanos by a colleague while working at the Baltimore Sun because of similarities between their writing. The two writers have much in common including a childhood in Silver Spring, attendance at the University of Maryland and their interest in the "fate of the American city and the black urban poor." Simon did not read Pelecanos initially because of territorial prejudice; Pelecanos is from Washington. Once Simon received further recommendations including one from his wife Laura Lippman he tried Pelecanos' novel The Sweet Forever and changed his mind. He sought out Pelecanos when recruiting writers for The Wire. The two met at the funeral of a mutual friend shortly after Simon delivered the pilot episode. Simon pitched Pelecanos the idea of The Wire as a novel for television about the American city as Pelecanos drove him home. Pelecanos became a regular writer and later a producer for the show's second and third seasons. Simon and Pelecanos collaborated to write the episode "Middle Ground" which received the show's first Emmy nomination, in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

Pelecanos left the production staff following the third season to focus on his next novel; Simon has commented that he missed having him working on the show full-time but was pleased that he continued to write for them and was a fan of the resultant book The Night Gardener. Similar to Simon's own experience in researching Homicide Pelecanos spent time embedded with the Washington DC homicide unit to research the book.

Crime novelist Dennis Lehane has also written for the series starting with the third season. Lehane has commented that he was impressed by Simon and Burns' ear for authentic street slang.

Eric Overmyer was brought in to fill the role of Pelecanos as a full-time writer producer. He had previously worked with Simon on Homicide where the two became friends. Simon has said that he was impressed with Overmyer's writing particularly in synthesizing the story for "Margin of Error" as the episode is the height of the show's political storyline but must also progress other plot threads.

Simon and his writing staff were nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for their work on the fifth season. Simon and Burns collaborated to write the series finale "-30-" which received the show's second Emmy nomination, again in the category Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.

Simon has stated that he finds working with HBO more comfortable than his experiences with NBC on Homicide and that HBO is able to allow greater creative control because it is dependent on subscribers rather than on viewing figures. He has said that he feels unable to return to network television because he felt pressure to compromise storytelling for audience satisfaction.

Generation Kill

Simon produced and wrote Generation Kill for HBO with Ed Burns. They again worked with Nina Noble as a producer. The miniseries is an adaption of the non-fiction book of the same name. It relates the first 40 days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq as experienced by 1st Reconnaissance Battalion and their embedded reporter, Evan Wright. Simon and Burns worked with Wright in adapting his book into the series.

Treme

Simon collaborated with Eric Overmyer again on Treme, a project about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans. Overmyer lives part-time in New Orleans, and Simon believed his experience would be valuable in navigating the "ornate oral tradition" of the city's stories. Simon also consulted with New Orleans natives Donald Harrison Jr., Kermit Ruffins, and Davis Rogan while developing the series. The show focuses on a working-class neighborhood, and is smaller in scope than The Wire. The series premiered on April 11, 2010, on HBO and ran for four seasons.

Treme is named after the Faubourg Treme neighborhood in New Orleans that is home to many of the city's musicians. Simon stated that the series would explore beyond the music scene to encompass political corruption, the public housing controversy, the criminal-justice system, clashes between police and Mardi Gras Indians, and the struggle to regain the tourism industry after the storm. One of the principal characters in the pilot script runs a restaurant. The series was filmed on location and was expected to provide a boost to the New Orleans economy. Simon's casting of the show mirrored that of The Wire in using local actors wherever possible. Wendell Pierce, who had previously played Bunk Moreland on The Wire, stars in the series. Clarke Peters, also of The Wire, is another series regular. Many other stars of The Wire have appeared in Treme, these include Steve Earle, Jim True-Frost, James Ransone, and Anwan Glover.

Show Me a Hero

In 2014, HBO greenlit production for Simon's next project Show Me a Hero, a six-hour miniseries co-written with William F. Zorzi and the episodes directed by Academy Award-winner Paul Haggis. The miniseries is an adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin and tells the story of Nick Wasicsko, the youngest big-city mayor in the country who is thrust into racial controversy when a federal court orders to build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of Yonkers, New York. Oscar Isaac stars as Wasicsko and leads a cast, which includes Catherine Keener, Jim Belushi, Bob Balaban and Winona Ryder. The miniseries premiered on August 16, 2015.

The Deuce

The Deuce is a 2017 drama television series set in Times Square, New York focusing on the rise of the porn industry in the 1970s-80s. Created and written by Simon along with frequent collaborator George Pelecanos, the series pilot began shooting in October 2015. It was picked up to series in January 2016. It premiered on September 10, 2017, and is broadcast by HBO in the United States.

The Deuce tells the story of the legalization and ensuing rise of the porn industry in New York beginning in the 1970s and its ongoing rise through the mid-1980s. Themes explored include the rise of HIV, the violence of the drug epidemic and the resulting real estate booms and busts that coincided with the change.

The Plot Against America

An adaptation of Philip Roth's novel, The Plot Against America is an alternate history told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey; as they watch the political rise of Charles Lindbergh, an aviator-hero and xenophobic populist, who becomes president and turns the nation toward fascism. The six-part miniseries premiered on March 16, 2020, on HBO.

Projects in developmentParting the Waters: With Taylor Branch, James McBride, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Eric Overmyer. About Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement, based on one of the volumes of the books America in the King Years written by Taylor Branch, specifically At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968. The project was to be produced by Oprah Winfrey, but was shelved.The Avenue: A book with William F. Zorzi Jr., on the Baltimore drug epidemic from 1951 to late 1980sThe Good Friday Plot: Miniseries about Abraham Lincoln based upon Manhunt: The Twelve-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson and American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies by Michael W. Kauffman.Capitol Hill: A collaboration with Carl Bernstein set in Capitol Hill, it examines partisanship and the role money plays in influencing national governance. The series was ordered to pilot by HBO in 2015 but has not received a subsequent season order.Legacy of Ashes: On the Central Intelligence Agency, based on the 2007 book Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner. The show was taken to the BBC and would have had Anthony Bourdain on the writing staff.The Pogues: Musical project with the help of the late Philip Chevron in development at The Public Theater in New York City, with Laura Lippman and George PelecanosA Dry Run: The Lincolns in Spain: A historical miniseries set during the Spanish Civil War about the Abraham Lincoln and George Washington Battalions, which were composed of volunteers from the United States who wanted to help the Spanish Republic overcome fascism. Mark Johnson will be the series producer and Mediapro will be the series' production company.

Writing process
Simon is known for his realistic dialogue and journalistic approach to writing. He says that authenticity is paramount and that he writes not with a general audience in mind but with the opinions of his subjects as his priority. He has described his extensive use of real anecdotes and characters in his writing as "stealing life".

In a talk that Simon gave to a live audience in April 2007 at the Creative Alliance's storytelling series, Simon disclosed that he had started writing for revenge against John Carroll and Bill Marimow, the two most senior editors at The Baltimore Sun when Simon was a reporter at the paper. Simon said he had watched Carroll and Marimow "single-handedly destroy" the newspaper and that he spent over ten years trying to get back at them.

Anything I've ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, anything I've ever done in life, down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up, wrong, and that I was the fucking center of the universe and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be.

One of the actions Simon took was to name a character in The Wire after Marimow and make the character "a repellent police-department toady." Carroll left The Baltimore Sun to become editor at the Los Angeles Times and resigned in 2005 after budget cuts were announced. "He stands up like a [bleeping] hero, takes a bullet," said Simon. In 2006 Marimow was diagnosed with prostate cancer, something that Simon said "took the edge off" his grudge. Carroll and Marimow "were fuel for 10 years of my life. ... And now, I got nothing," Simon said.

When asked about these comments, Simon said that he had spoken with "some hyperbole and, I hope, comic effect", adding that his basic viewpoint was: "that simple revenge is both empty and beside the point and that a good story carefully told has to speak to larger themes. You do not tell an ornate, careful story over ten hours of HBO airtime merely to bust on any given soul."

Views on journalism
In an interview in Reason in 2004, Simon said that since leaving the newspaper business he has become more cynical about the power of journalism. "One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage," said Simon. "I've become increasingly cynical about the ability of daily journalism to effect any kind of meaningful change. I was pretty dubious about it when I was a journalist, but now I think it's remarkably ineffectual."

While testifying at a 2009 Senate hearing regarding the future of journalism in America, Simon indicted what he saw as poor online journalism, calling the phrase citizen journalist "Orwellian to [his] ears." Simon ended his testimony by declaring, "I don't think anything can be done to save high-end journalism."

Political views
Simon has described himself as a social democrat, broadly supporting the existence of capitalism while opposing "raw, unencumbered capitalism, absent any social framework, absent any sense of community, without regard to the weakest and most vulnerable classes in society", which he described as "a recipe for needless pain, needless human waste, (and) needless tragedy". He has criticized the idea of trickle-down economics.

In 2013, Simon compared the global surveillance disclosures uncovered by Edward Snowden to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to record the numbers dialed from all pay phones. The city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to record the dialed numbers. The placement of the payphone number recorders formed the basis of The Wires first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the surveillance disclosures is a "faux scandal."

During a November 2013 speech at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, he said that America has become "a horror show" of savage inequality as a result of capitalism run amok, and that "unless we reverse course, the average human being is worthless on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism."

Simon has also spoken out publicly against crime journalist Kevin Deutsch, disputing the portrayal of Baltimore's illegal drug trade in Deutsch's book, Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire. Simon has described the book as "a wholesale fabrication."

During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Simon praised Bernie Sanders for "rehabilitating and normalizing the term socialist back into American public life", but opposed some attacks against Hillary Clinton which he felt focused on her presumed motives rather than the substance of policies.

Personal life
In 1991, Simon was married to graphic artist Kayle Tucker. They had a son. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 2006, Simon married best-selling Baltimore novelist and former Sun reporter Laura Lippman in a ceremony officiated by John Waters. They have a daughter, who was born in 2010.

Simon's nephew, Jason Simon, is a guitarist and vocalist for the psychedelic rock band Dead Meadow. The band was mentioned in an episode of The Wire.

Simon was the 2012 commencement speaker for the Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences, as well as the speaker for the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School graduation.

In 2019, Simon joined a host of other writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA's stand against the ATA after failing to come to an agreement on their "Code of Conduct". Simon's statement to the writers union was widely circulated. He had previously led the rallying cry about the unfair practices of packaging by the major talent agencies.

Works and publications

Commentary

Non-fiction books

Filmography

Producer

Writer

References

Further reading

External links

 David Simon's blog.

1960 births
American crime fiction writers
Jewish American journalists
American non-fiction crime writers
American newspaper reporters and correspondents
American male novelists
American male screenwriters
American television producers
American television writers
Anthony Award winners
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School alumni
Drug policy reform activists
Edgar Award winners
Living people
MacArthur Fellows
American male television writers
Maryland Democrats
Primetime Emmy Award winners
Showrunners
The Baltimore Sun people
University of Maryland, College Park alumni
Writers Guild of America Award winners
Writers from Baltimore
Novelists from Maryland
American male non-fiction writers
Screenwriters from Washington, D.C.
People from Bethesda, Maryland
21st-century American Jews
Ben Hibbs (July 23, 1901 – March 30, 1975) was born in Fontana, Kansas and earned an A.B. from the University of Kansas in 1923.

In 1942, Hibbs began a twenty-year association with the editorial staff of The Saturday Evening Post. During the Eisenhower administration, Hibbs persuaded the President to sign a contract calling for him to write four articles a year for publication in The Post beginning after Eisenhower left the White House. During Hibbs’ final year with The Post, 1962, he served as senior editor and began working directly with General Eisenhower on articles he prepared for the magazine.

Hibbs left The Post in January 1963 and joined the editorial staff of Reader’s Digest, owned by DeWitt Wallace. When Eisenhower’s contract with The Post expired in 1964, Hibbs was responsible for the General’s signing a new contract agreeing to write three articles a year for Reader’s Digest at a fee of $30,000 per article. Hibbs was the editor assigned to collaborate with Eisenhower in producing these articles.

The general procedure followed in producing an Eisenhower article was begun when a topic, originated by the General, Hibbs, or The Reader’s Digest editors, was decided upon. Eisenhower and Hibbs then agreed to a meeting time several weeks in advance and proceeded to accumulate ideas and facts for the article. They would then meet several times at either Gettysburg or Palm Springs to discuss the article, working from an outline prepared by Hibbs. From these conversations, and the notes Hibbs compiled from them, a draft of the article was created. It was then sent to Eisenhower for his comments and editing before being submitted to the executive editor of The Reader’s Digest, Hobart Lewis, for final editing.

Hibbs first met Eisenhower during the last year of World War II, when the General requested that reporters from the United States be flown to Europe to document the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps then being liberated by the U.S. Army. Hibbs and the other correspondents were shown the Dachau concentration camp and the Buchenwald concentration camp  before being introduced to Eisenhower at his SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) headquarters. Following the war, Hibbs attempted to purchase for The Post the magazine rights to General Eisenhower’s memoirs, Crusade in Europe, but was unsuccessful when Eisenhower sold those rights to Life.

Hibbs actively promoted the candidacy of Eisenhower for the Presidency of the United States in 1952. He wrote an editorial entitled "Will the Republicans Commit Suicide in Chicago" concerning the Taft-Eisenhower battle over the seating of Republican delegates from Texas.

Hibbs was never a part of the inner White House Group during the Eisenhower administrations. However, he did remain an acquaintance of the President and was invited to attend stag dinners and other social functions. His close association with Eisenhower developed after the President left office and began writing articles for The Post and Reader’s Digest.

References

External links
 Papers of Ben Hibbs, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

Eisenhower administration personnel
1975 deaths
1901 births
Kansas Republicans A write-in candidate is a candidate whose name does not appear on the ballot but seeks election by asking voters to cast a vote for the candidate by physically writing in the person's name on the ballot. Depending on electoral law it may be possible to win an election by winning a sufficient number of such write-in votes, which count equally as if the person was formally listed on the ballot.

Writing in a name that is not already on the election ballot is considered a practice of the United States. However, some other jurisdictions have allowed this practice. In the United States, there are variations in laws governing write-in candidates, depending on the office (federal or local) and whether the election is a primary election or the general election; general practice is an empty field close by annotated to explain its purpose on the ballot if it applies. In five U.S. states there are no elections to which it can apply, under their present laws. Election laws are enacted by each state and in the District of Columbia, to apply to their voters.

How to write in the name
Some U.S. states and local jurisdictions allow a voter to affix a sticker, with the write-in candidate's name, to the ballot in lieu of actually writing in the candidate's name.

Write-in candidacies are sometimes a result of a candidate being legally or procedurally ineligible to run under their own name or party; write-in candidacies may be permitted where term limits bar an incumbent candidate from being officially nominated for, or being listed on the ballot for, re-election. They are also typically used when a candidate, often an incumbent has lost a primary election but still wishes to contest the general election.

In some cases, write-in campaigns have been organized to support a candidate who is not personally involved in running; this may be a form of draft campaign.

Write-in candidates may have to register as candidates
Write-in candidates have won elections on rare occasions. Also, write-in votes are sometimes cast for ineligible people or fictional characters.

Some jurisdictions require write-in candidates be registered as official candidates before the election. This is standard in elections with a large pool of potential candidates, as there may be multiple candidates with the same name that could be written in.

The spoiler effect
In some cases, the number of write-in votes cast in an election is greater than the entire margin of victory, suggesting that the write-ins may have been sufficient to tip the balance and change the outcome of the election by creating a spoiler effect.

Primary elections in the United States
Many U.S. states and municipalities allow for write-in votes in a partisan primary election where no candidate is listed on the ballot to have the same functional effect as nominating petitions: for example, if there are no Reform Party members on the ballot for state general assembly and a candidate receives more than 200 write-in votes when the primary election is held (or the other number of signatures that were required for ballot access), the candidate will be placed on the ballot on that ballot line for the general election. In most places, this provision is in place for non-partisan elections as well.

Write-in option in a referendum
A write-in option may occasionally be available in a multiple-choice referendum; for example in the January 1982 Guamanian status referendum.

Contrast from a blank ballot election system
The term "write-in candidate" is used in elections in which names of candidates or parties are preprinted on a paper ballot or displayed on an electronic voting machine. The term is not generally used in elections in which all ballots are blank and thus all voters must write in the names of their preferred candidates. Blank ballot election systems reduce the cost of printing the ballots, but increase the complexity of casting and counting votes. Such systems are used in Japan, and used in the past in the French Second Republic, and in elections in the Philippines from World War 2 until the 2010 general election. Some systems use a semi-blank ballot, such as Finland, where the voter must fill in a candidate's given number or letter from a separate ballot, but where there is a clear-cut arrangement with a circle or box with a description of how to vote for a given candidate. Blank-ballot systems typically require candidates to be nominated in advance.

United States

The requirements to appear on the general election ballot as an independent candidate or to have write-in votes counted vary by state and by political office sought.

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia allow write-in votes on their ballots, including for president; Arkansas, New Mexico and South Carolina allow write-in candidates for some offices but not for president; Mississippi allows write-in votes only to substitute a candidate listed on the ballot who was removed, withdrew or died; Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma and South Dakota do not allow any write-in votes. Most of the jurisdictions allowing write-in votes require that the write-in candidates register by a certain date for their votes to be counted. Typically this registration consists only of a declaration of candidacy, but some states also require signatures of a certain number of voters, additional paperwork or fees. The deadline to register as a write-in candidate is usually later than to petition to be listed on the ballot.

2020 presidential general election 

Notes

U.S. Senate

Republican William Knowland was elected in 1946 to the U.S. Senate from California, for a two-month term. The special election for the two-month term featured a November ballot with no names printed on it, and all candidates in that special election were write-in candidates.
Democrat Strom Thurmond was elected in 1954 to the United States Senate in South Carolina as a write-in candidate, after state Democratic leaders had blocked him from receiving the party's nomination.
In 2010 incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski lost the Republican primary to Joe Miller. Following her defeat she ran in the general election as a write-in candidate. Murkowski had filed, and won, a lawsuit requiring election officials to have the list of names of write-in candidates distributed at the polls, and subsequently won the election with a wide enough margin over both Miller, and Democratic Party candidate Scott T. McAdams, to make moot the write-in ballots that had been challenged by Miller.
In 2020, Chris Janicek won the Democratic Senatorial nomination, but during the campaign he sent out sexually inappropriate text messages to staffers causing the Nebraska Democratic Party to withdraw its support from him. The Nebraska Democratic Party attempted to replace Janicek with Alisha Shelton, but Janicek refused to drop out preventing the replacement. Preston Love Jr. later announced his intention to run a write-in senatorial campaign and received the support of the Nebraska Democratic Party, making him the first black person to receive the support of a major party for United States Senate in Nebraska.

U.S. House of Representatives
In 1918, Peter F. Tague was elected to the U.S. House as a write-in independent Democrat, defeating the Democratic nominee, John F. Fitzgerald.
In 1930 Republican Charles F. Curry, Jr. was elected to the House as a write-in from Sacramento, California. His father, Congressman Charles F. Curry Sr., would have been listed on the ballot unopposed but, due to his untimely death, his name was removed and no candidate's name was listed on the ballot.
In 1958, Democrat Dale Alford was elected as a write-in candidate to the United States House of Representatives in Arkansas. As member of the Little Rock school board, Alford launched his write-in campaign a week before the election because the incumbent, Brooks Hays, was involved in the incident in which president Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce racial integration at Little Rock Central High School. Racial integration was unpopular at the time, and Alford won by approximately 1,200 votes, a 2% margin.
In 1964 Democrat Gale Schisler was nominated for Congress in Illinois as a write-in candidate when no Democrat filed to run in the primary election. He defeated incumbent Robert McLoskey in the November General Election.
In November 1980, Republican Joe Skeen was elected to Congress in New Mexico as a write-in candidate, because of a spoiler candidate who also happened to be a write-in. No Republican had filed to run against the incumbent Democrat, Harold L. Runnels, before the close of filing. Runnels died on August 5, 1980, and the Democrats requested a special primary to pick a replacement candidate. The New Mexico Secretary of State allowed the Democrats to have a special primary, but did not allow the Republicans to have a special primary, because they had already gone with no candidate. So Skeen ran as a write-in candidate. After Runnels' widow lost the Democratic special primary, she launched her own write-in candidacy, which split the Democratic vote, taking enough votes from the Democratic nominee to give the election to the Republican, Skeen, who won with a 38% plurality.
Ron Packard of California finished in second place in the 18-candidate Republican primary to replace the retiring Clair Burgener. Packard lost the primary by 92 votes in 1982, and then mounted a write-in campaign as an independent. He won the election with a 37% plurality against both a Republican and a Democratic candidate. Following the elections, he re-aligned himself as a Republican.
Democrat Charlie Wilson was the endorsed candidate of the Democratic Party for Ohio's 6th congressional district in Ohio to replace Ted Strickland in 2006. Strickland was running for Governor, and had to give up his congressional seat. Wilson, though, did not qualify for the ballot because only 46 of the 96 signatures on his candidacy petition were deemed valid, while 50 valid signatures were required for ballot placement. The Democratic Party continued to support Wilson, and an expensive primary campaign ensued – over $1 million was spent by both parties. Wilson overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary as a write-in candidate on May 2, 2006 against two Democratic candidates whose names were on the ballot, with Wilson collecting 44,367 votes, 67% of the Democratic votes cast. Wilson faced Republican Chuck Blasdel in the general election on November 7, 2006, and won, receiving 61% of the votes.
Democrat Dave Loebsack entered the 2006 Democratic primary in Iowa's second congressional district as a write-in candidate after failing to get the required number of signatures. He won the primary and in the general election he defeated 15-term incumbent Jim Leach by a 51% to 49% margin.
Jerry McNerney ran as a write-in candidate in the March 2004 Democratic Primary in California's 11th congressional district. He received 1,667 votes (3% of the votes cast), and, having no opposition (no candidates were listed on the Democratic primary ballot), won the primary. Although he lost the November 2004 general election to Republican Richard Pombo, McNerney ran again in 2006 (as a candidate listed on the ballot) and won the Democratic Primary in June, and then the rematch against Pombo in November.
Shelley Sekula-Gibbs failed as a write-in candidate in the November 7, 2006 election to represent the 22nd Texas congressional district in the 110th Congress (for the full term commencing January 3, 2007). The seat had been vacant since June 9, 2006, due to the resignation of the then representative Tom DeLay. Therefore, on the same ballot, there were two races: one for the 110th Congress, as well as a race for the unexpired portion of the term during the 109th Congress (until January 3, 2007). Sekula-Gibbs won the race for the unexpired portion of the term during the 109th Congress as a candidate listed on the ballot. She could not be listed on the ballot for the full term because Texas law did not allow a replacement candidate to be listed on the ballot after the winner of the primary (Tom DeLay) has resigned.
Peter Welch, a Democrat representing Vermont's sole congressional district, became both the Democratic and Republican nominee for the House when he ran for re-election in 2008 and 2016. Because the Republicans did not field any candidate on the primary ballot in those elections, Welch won enough write-in votes to win the Republican nomination.

State legislatures
Several members of the Alaska House of Representatives were elected as write-in candidates during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly from rural districts in the northern and western portions of the state. Factors in play at the time include the newness of Alaska as a state and the previous absence of electoral politics in many of the rural communities, creating an environment which made it hard to attract candidates to file for office during the official filing period. Most of the areas in question were largely populated by Alaska natives, who held little political power in Alaska at the time. This only began to change following the formation of the Alaska Federation of Natives and the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Known examples of successful write-in candidates include Kenneth A. Garrison and Father Segundo Llorente (1960), Frank R. Ferguson (1972), James H. "Jimmy" Huntington (1974), and Nels A. Anderson, Jr. (1976). The incumbent in Llorente's election, Axel C. Johnson, ran for re-election as a write-in candidate after failing to formally file his candidacy paperwork. Johnson and Llorente, as write-in candidates, both outpolled the one candidate who did appear on the ballot. Ferguson and Anderson were both incumbents who launched their write-in campaigns after being defeated in the primary election. Anderson's main opponent, Joseph McGill, had himself won election to the House in 1970 against a write-in candidate by only 5 votes.
Carl Hawkinson of Galesburg, Illinois won the Republican primary for the Illinois Senate from Illinois's 47th District in 1986 as a write-in candidate. He went on to be elected in the general election and served until 2003. Hawkinson defeated another write-in, David Leitch, in the primary. Incumbent State Senator Prescott Bloom died in a home fire after the filing date for the primary had passed.
 Arizona state senator Don Shooter won the 2010 primary as a write-in and went on to win the general election.
After failing to receive the Republican Party's 1990 Wilson Pakula nomination, incumbent and registered Conservative New York State Senator Serphin Maltese won the party's nomination as a write-in candidate.
Charlotte Burks won as a Democratic write-in candidate for the Tennessee Senate seat left vacant when the incumbent, her husband Tommy, was assassinated by his opponent, Byron Looper, two weeks before the elections of November 2, 1998. The assassin was the only name on the ballot, so Charlotte ran as a write-in candidate.
Winnie Brinks was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 2012 after a series of unusual events. In May of that year, State Representative Roy Schmidt – who had previously filed to run for re-election as a Democrat – withdrew from the Democratic primary and re-filed as a Republican. A friend of Schmidt's nephew filed to run as a Democrat, but withdrew two days later amid anger among local Democrats. This left Democrats without a candidate. Brinks ran as a write-in to be the Democratic nominee. She won the primary and was listed on the ballot in the general election, which she also won. Coincidentally, the general election also saw a write-in candidate, Bing Goei, receive significant support.
Scott Wagner was elected as an anti-establishment Republican write-in candidate to the Pennsylvania Senate in a March 2014 special election over endorsed Republican nominee Ron Miller and Democrat Linda Small.
Nick Freitas was re-elected as a write-in candidate after missing a filing deadline to appear on the ballot in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Local government
 Angela Allen was elected Mayor of Tar Heel, North Carolina (population 115) as a write-in candidate in 2003.
 Julia Allen of Readington, New Jersey won a write-in campaign in the November 2005 elections for the Township Committee, after a candidate accused of corruption had won the primary.
 Tom Ammiano, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, entered the race for Mayor of San Francisco as a write-in candidate two weeks before the 1999 general election. He received 25% of the vote, coming in second place and forcing incumbent Mayor Willie Brown into a runoff election, which Brown won by margin of 59% to 40%. In 2001, the campaign was immortalized in the award-winning documentary film See How They Run.
 John R. Brinkley ran as a write-in candidate for governor of Kansas in 1930. He was motivated at least in part by the state's revocation of his medical license and attempts to shut down his clinic, where he performed alternative medical procedures including transplantation of goat glands into humans. He won 29.5% of the vote in a three-way race. Brinkley's medical and political career are documented in Pope Brock's book Charlatan.
 Mike Duggan filed petition to run for mayor of Detroit in 2013; however, following a court challenge, Duggan's name was removed from the ballot. Duggan then campaigned as a write-in in the August 2013 primary, with the intent of being one of the top two vote-getters and thus advancing to the general election in November. Duggan received the highest number of votes in the primary, and advanced to the runoff in November. He eventually defeated challenger Sheriff Benny Napoleon and became the Mayor of Detroit.
 Donna Frye ran as a write-in candidate for Mayor of San Diego in 2004. A controversy erupted when several thousand votes for her were not counted because the voters had failed to fill in the bubble next to the write-in line. Had those votes been counted, she would have won the election.
 Michael Jarjura was re-elected Mayor of Waterbury, Connecticut in 2005 as a write-in candidate after losing the Democratic party primary to Karen Mulcahy, who used to serve as Waterbury's tax collector before Jarjura fired her in 2004 "for what he claimed was her rude and abusive conduct toward citizens". After spending $100,000 on a general elections write-in campaign, Jarjura received 7,907 votes, enough for a plurality of 39%.
 James Maher won the mayorship of Baxter Estates, New York on March 15, 2005 as a write-in candidate with 29 votes. Being the only one on the ballot, the incumbent mayor, James Neville, did not campaign, as he did not realize that there was a write-in campaign going on. Neville received only 13 votes.
 Beverly O'Neil won a third term as Mayor of Long Beach, California as a write-in candidate in 2002. The Long Beach City City Charter has a term limit amendment that says a candidate cannot be on the ballot after two full terms, but does not prevent the person from running as a write-in candidate. She finished first in a seven-candidate primary, but did not receive more than 50% of the vote, forcing a runoff contest. In the runoff, still restricted from the ballot, she got roughly 47% of the vote in a three-way election that included a second write-in candidate.
 Michael Sessions, an 18-year-old high school senior, won as a write-in candidate for Mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan in 2005. He was too young to qualify for the ballot.
 In 2021, Byron Brown, the incumbent mayor of Buffalo, New York, defeated Democratic challenger India Walton, by running a successful write-in campaign after losing the Democratic primary to Walton.
 In Galesburg, Illinois, an error by the Galesburg Election Commission in late 2010 gave city council candidate Chuck Reynolds the wrong number of signatures he required to be on the ballot for the April 2011 city council election, resulting in his removal from the ballot when challenged by incumbent Russell Fleming. Reynolds ran as a write-in vote in the April 2011 election, and lost by 9 votes.
 Anthony A. Williams, then incumbent Mayor of Washington, D.C., was forced to run as a write-in candidate in the 2002 Democratic primary, because he had too many invalid signatures for his petition. He won the Democratic primary, and went on to win re-election.
 In the November 8, 2011, election for Commonwealth's Attorney of Richmond County, Virginia, 16-year incumbent Wayne Emery was certified the winner as a write-in candidate over challenger James Monroe by a margin of 53 votes (2.4%) out of 2,230 votes cast, after his petitions were challenged and his name was removed from the ballot.
 In the August 4, 2020, primary election of Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, Monica Ross-Williams, a then Ypsilanti Township Trustee, received 3,478 write-in votes for Ypsilanti Township Clerk, for the highest number of write-in votes in any election in Washtenaw County, Michigan history.
 In the 1997 election for Mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, Stubbs the Cat won over the two human candidates. He was re-elected every mayoral election thereafter, and served until his death on July 2, 2017.
 In 2011, in Pacific, Washington, Marine veteran Cy Sun ousted incumbent mayor Rich Hildreth as a write-in candidate, using a comprehensive ground game in the small town to convince locals to support him over Hildreth, whom he accused of corruption. After the election, the county elections office reported that a sufficient number of write-ins votes had made it possible that a write-in could win, and after a count of the write-ins, Sun beat Hildreth by 464 to 401. Sun's mayorship was plagued by political and physical challenges, and Sun would be recalled in 2013.
 Eau Claire County, Wisconsin sheriff Ron Cramer, formerly a sheriff's deputy, won election as Eau Claire County's 47th sheriff, defeating disgraced 10-year incumbent sheriff Richard M. Hewitt in a write-in campaign hastily organized just weeks before the election in 1996. He has handily won reelection every 4 years since, usually running unopposed.
 Lynda Neuwirth defeated the lone candidate on the ballot, Joseph DiPasquale, for the Ellicottville, New York village justice position on March 19, 2019; Neuwirth received three votes to DiPasquale's two. Neuwirth was ousted after only two months in the position, as voters had approved a referendum abolishing the court the previous November; when the abolition was delayed two months, Neuwirth was not allowed to retain her seat and was replaced by a justice from the surrounding town, which will absorb the village court's jurisdiction.

Other elections
Aaron Schock was elected to the District 150 School Board in Peoria, Illinois in 2001 by a write-in vote, after his petitions were challenged and his name was removed from the ballot. He defeated the incumbent by over 2,000 votes, approximately 6,400 to 4,300 votes. He went on to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives, and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2008. He was later forced to resign in an expenses scandal.
John Adams became an Orange County, California judge in November 2002 after running along with 10 other write-in candidates in the primaries on March 5, 2002 against incumbent Judge Ronald Kline. After the filing deadline in which no candidate filed to run against Kline, a computer hacker discovered that Judge Kline had child pornography on his home computer. Kline got less than 50% of the vote in the primaries, requiring a runoff between him and write-in candidate John Adams (who actually received more votes than Kline). After some legal maneuvers, Kline's name was removed from the general elections, leaving the general election a runoff between Adams and Gay Sandoval, who was the second highest write-in vote getter. Charges against Kline were eventually thrown out.
On September 15, 2009, four write-in candidates in the Independence Party primaries for various offices in Putnam County, New York defeated their on-ballot opponents.
In a May 2011 school board election for the Bentley School Board in Michigan, Lisa Osborn ran as a write-in candidate and needed just one vote to win a seat. However, she did not receive any votes, even from herself. She explained herself by saying that she was at her son's baseball game and did not have time to go to the polls.

California's Proposition 14 impact on write-in candidates
In 2010, California voters passed Proposition 14 which set up a new election system for the United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, all statewide offices (governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, state controller, attorney general, insurance commissioner, and superintendent of public instruction), California Board of Equalization, and for the California State Legislature. In the system set up by Proposition 14, there are two rounds of voting, and the top two vote-getters for each race in the first round (the primary, held in June 2004 – 2018 and March 2020-present) advance to a second round (the general election, held in November). Proposition 14 specifically prohibits write-in candidates in the second round, and this prohibition was upheld in a court challenge. Another court challenge to the prohibition on write-in candidates in the second round was filed in July 2014.

Although Proposition 14 prohibits write-in candidates in the second round of voting, it has made it easier for write-in candidates in the first round to advance to the second round. This generally happens in elections where only one candidate is listed on the ballot. Since in each race the top two vote-getters from the first round are guaranteed to advance to the second round, if only one candidate is listed on the ballot, a write-in candidate can easily advance to the second round, as the write-in candidate would only have to compete with other write-in candidates for the 2nd spot, not with any listed candidates. In some jungle primary systems, if the winner in the first round wins by more than 50% of the vote, then the second (runoff) round gets cancelled, but in the system set up by Proposition 14, a second (runoff) round is required regardless of the percent of the vote that the winner of the first round received. Proposition 14 therefore guarantees that if only one candidate is listed on the ballot in the first round, a write-in candidate running against the one listed candidate can earn a spot for the second round with as little as one vote.

The first election in which Proposition 14 went into effect was the 2012 elections.

Another impact of Proposition 14 on write-in candidates is that since the passage of Proposition 14, candidates who are not affiliated with any party can be listed on the ballot for election to offices affected by Proposition 14. Prior to passage of Proposition 14, candidates who were not affiliated with any party, could not run in any party primaries, and were required to run in the general election as write-in candidates.

Other countries

With a few exceptions, the practice of recognizing write-in candidates is typically viewed internationally as an American tradition.

A bizarre incident involving a fictitious write-in candidacy occurred in the small town of Picoazá, Ecuador in 1967. A company ran a series of campaign-themed advertisements for a foot powder called Pulvapies. Some of the slogans used included "Vote for any candidate, but if you want well-being and hygiene, vote for Pulvapies", and "For Mayor: Honorable Pulvapies". The foot powder Pulvapies ended up receiving the most votes in the election.
In Brazil, until the introduction of electronic voting in 1994, the ballot had no names written for legislative candidates, so many voters would protest by voting on fictional characters or religious figures. In a famous case, the São Paulo city zoo rhinoceros Cacareco got around 100,000 votes in the 1959 elections for the municipal council, more than any candidate. However, those votes were not considered because Brazilian law stipulates that a candidate must be affiliated to a political party to take office.
 Until 2013, write-in candidates were permitted at municipal elections in France for councils of communes with a population of less than 2500.
 Elections in Sweden are open list, with voters placing into the ballot box an envelope containing their choice of either a ballot preprinted with the name of a registered party or else a blank ballot on which they write the name of a party (registered or unregistered) and optionally that of a candidate. A person must consent to being a candidate listed on a preprinted ballot, but there was no such obligation for write-in names until the 2018 general election.  In the 2006 municipal elections, the Sweden Democrats (SD) won seats on several councils where they had no nominee or preprinted ballots; most SD voters wrote the party name but no candidate name. The seats were filled by the name most often written, if any, and left empty if no voter wrote in a name. One example was Vårgårda Municipality, where only three of 143 SD voters wrote in names, of which two were for an ineligible non-resident; the winner resigned his seat as he opposed the SD and his sole vote was cast by his father as a joke. In 2010 one Jimmy Åkesson was elected to Staffanstorp Municipality council after a single SD voter wrote his name. The voter apparently intended SD leader Jimmie Åkesson, not resident in Staffanstorp.
 In elections in Austria, writing on a ballot paper does not invalidate a vote provided the voter's preference is clear. In the 1990 legislative election the unpopular SPÖ, worried that voters would not select it on the party-list ballot, advised them to write in the name of Franz Vranitzky, its popular leader. Such ballots would be interpreted as SPÖ votes.

Protest
Mad magazine satirically called to vote for Alfred E. Neuman as a write-in candidate for every U.S. presidential election from 1960 to 1980 with slogans like "You could do worse–and you already have" and "There are Bigger Idiots running for office!".
In the 1980 U.S. presidential election, guitarist Joe Walsh ran a mock write-in campaign, promising to make his song "Life's Been Good" the new national anthem if he won, and running on a platform of "Free Gas for Everyone." Though Walsh (then aged 33) was not old enough to actually assume the office, he wanted to raise public awareness of the election. (In 1992, Walsh purportedly ran for vice-president, in his song "Vote For Me", a track on his album Songs for a Dying Planet, which was released that year.)
During the 2000 United States Congress Elections, film-maker Michael Moore led a campaign for voters to submit a ficus tree as a write-in candidate. This campaign was replicated across the country and was recounted in an episode of The Awful Truth.
In 2012, a campaign was waged to write in Charles Darwin against Georgia congressman Paul Broun (who was running unopposed) after Broun "called evolution and other areas of science 'lies straight from the pit of hell.' " Darwin received approximately 4,000 votes. However, because Darwin was not registered as an official candidate (some states require even write-ins to be pre-registered), the Georgia Secretary of State did not tabulate those votes.
In 2016, several grassroots campaigns to elect Bernie Sanders President as a write-in candidate were established on social media in the run-up to the United States presidential election. Though Sanders continued to campaign for Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, supporters pointed to alleged DNC bias in the Democratic Party's presidential primaries against Sanders, and Clinton's email scandal, and continued to support him. Both Clinton and Donald Trump would have had to win less than the required 270 electoral college votes for Sanders to have denied either candidate the presidency, and for the election to be passed to the House of Representatives – thus the initial write-in campaign around Vermont, offering only three college votes, was not successful, but Sanders did receive almost six percent of the vote there. The campaign expanded to include all 12 eligible states (one of which listed Sanders as an official write-in candidate), and relied on states such as California, with a high electoral college vote count and large support for Sanders, to be successful in denying both Trump and Clinton.
 In Sweden, all handwritten votes are scanned by computer and the results published online, although only votes for valid parties count towards determining successful candidates. In the 2010 general election, ineffective votes included 120 for Donald Duck and 2 for "myself", as well as several computer code snippets apparently intended as code injection attacks aimed at either the program which tallied the votes or the browsers of users who accessed the results website.
 In the 2018 Egyptian presidential election, owing to a large number of candidates being arrested or barred from running, Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah received over a million votes, as many Egyptians cancelled out the names of both candidates and wrote his instead. This was higher than the number of votes received by the second place candidate, Moussa Mostafa Moussa. Write-in votes are not deemed valid in Egypt.

See also

None of the above
None of these candidates - Nevada's implementation of the "None of the above" voting option

Notes

References

Elections in the United States
Politics of the United States