Downballot Stakes: Your Questions Answered | Bolts

Which chambers may flip? What if no one is running for an office? We respond to six more questions from Bolts readers about the 2024 elections.

Ask Bolts, Daniel Nichanian | October 23, 2024

Our team at Bolts has spent much of the last year reporting on the stakes of the 2024 elections. Then last month, we turned the mic over to you: As part of our series “Ask Bolts,” we invited you to send us your questions about what is brewing in November.

I answered six of your questions in the first part of our mailbag two weeks ago, from the role of state auditors to the most pivotal referendums. Today, I tackle six more.

Navigate to the question that most interests you here, or scroll down to explore them all at your leisure:

Which legislative chambers may flip in November?Jump to our answer.

What happens in elections where no one is running?Jump to our answer.

Which party will win more congressional delegations, in case that matters for the presidential election?Jump to our answer.

What happens if you walk into the wrong polling place by mistake?Jump to our answer.

I spent hours trying to research our local candidates’ platforms and it was fruitless. Shouldn’t every candidate have a website with their platform?!Jump to our answer.

I can’t seem to get people to care about boards of canvassers. Can you explain the significance of the offices that play a role in elections?Jump to our answer.

The election is now just days away—so explore our cheat sheet of more than 500 critical races, and our election guides to supreme court races and to local criminal justice races. Before you know it, we’ll have plenty more on the results in November.

What is the [state legislative] chamber with the best chance of switching to blue? (Arizona I assume, but is there another?) — @sidewalkslam, on BlueSky

You’re right that Democrats’ biggest target is Arizona: If they pick up two seats each in the Senate and House, they would secure full control of the state government—a first since 1966.

But that’s not all.

There’s Wisconsin, most notably. The victory of a liberal justice in 2023 paved the way for a ruling that struck down GOP gerrymanders. Now, the legislative elections are taking place under radically different maps that give Democrats a chance to flip the chambers; that’s especially true in the Assembly, since only half of the state Senate is up this year.

The New Hampshire House ended in a near-draw two years ago; if Democrats flip it this year, they would end GOP control over the state no matter what happens in the governor’s race. This chamber often comes down to tiny margins: It has 400 seats—that’s a national high, by far—and 30 races went to a recount two years ago; six were decided by a margin under 10 votes.

But the GOP is also looking for gains. In 2022, Democrats unexpectedly flipped four chambers, which sparked major policy swings. This fall, control of three of them hangs by a thread. In Pennsylvania’s House, Michigan’s House, and Minnesota’s Senate, losing a single seat would cost Democrats the majority. (Democrats’ fourth 2022 gain, Michigan’s Senate, is not on the ballot this fall.) The GOP is also eying other chambers, most notably Alaska’s House and Minnesota’s House.

And don’t just look at which party wins more seats. Many states are on supermajority watch. Nevada Democrats might gain a two-thirds majority in the state Senate, to go along with the one they already have in the Assembly; this would allow them to override vetoes by the Republican governor. The GOP, meanwhile, hopes to keep new supermajorities in Nebraska and North Carolina: The defection of a single Democrat in each state handed Republicans that edge, and now they can’t afford to lose any seat.

North Carolina Democrats, in fact, want to avenge that defection directly: Tricia Cotham, the lawmaker who switched parties, paving the way for major conservative wins like new abortion restrictions, is running for reelection in the Charlotte suburbs. The GOP redrew legislative maps to help her, but this is one of the most expensive races of the year.

Hoping to go even more granular and learn about which specific districts will determine the majority in these chambers? Our Bolts cheat sheet provides you information, state by state.

What happens in elections where no one is running? In my county in South Carolina, we have no one running for Soil and Water District Commission, but there is an ability to write-in a candidate. — Noah, from South Carolina

It’s extremely common for elections to feature one candidate running unopposed. Prosecutor races are often elections in name only, with incumbents waltzing into office with no opponent. This fall, all five of Oregon’s supreme court races feature a sitting justice with no challenger. Democrats are already sure to run the Massachusetts legislature next year, and Republicans the Oklahoma legislature, because most seats in each state have been left uncontested.

But what about elections where no one files at all? That’s far less common, but it’s by no means unheard of. They’re more likely to pop up for local offices that are under the radar, like municipal treasurers, school board members, or neighborhood councils.

Elections for soil and water commissions, which are local bodies that are meant to protect natural resources, are a prime spot for this. You just asked about one South Carolina county, but there are actually a handful in your state where no one filed to run for these bodies. It’s a similar story in North Carolina and Oregon, two other states with soil and water districts.

If no one files to run by the deadline for candidates to appear on the ballot, it’s still possible for someone to mount a write-in bid. But that’s not as simple as just getting a few friends to jot down your name. Many states require that someone come forward and formally register as a write-in contender, though what that means varies greatly. In South Carolina, where you live, there’s no form to file, though the state asks candidates to notify local authorities. In Wisconsin, you need to file a form at least a few days prior. In North Carolina, depending on the office, you may need to collect signatures and file a petition months before an election.

For instance, in Dare County, North Carolina, no one filed to appear on the ballot for the soil and water commission job, but a resident is currently mounting a write-in campaign.

What if an election really has no winner? Say no one ran, and no write-in materialized. The next step, once again, depends on your local laws. In many cases, this gets treated like a regular vacancy that the governor, county board, or city council would fill via an appointment. Here, too, some states have idiosyncratic rules: If such a situation occurs in North Carolina, the incumbent office-holder may hold the seat for the entire term even if they didn’t run for reelection.

Is there a chance for Democrats to win more congressional *delegations* this cycle? I’m thinking about the situation where neither candidate gets 270 electoral votes. Can Democrats get the lead in 26 states? — @MeWritesGood on X

This question refers to a possible scenario in which neither Harris nor Trump reach a majority in the electoral college—whether because they tied at 269 each, or even because of a faithless elector. In such a case, the U.S. House would decide the election: Each state’s delegation gets one combined vote, and someone needs the support of 26 delegations to become president. The presidential election hasn’t been decided in this way since 1824.

The GOP currently controls 26 delegations and Democrats 22. Two are tied. But what matters is the next Congress, the one that’ll be elected on Nov. 5. So could things change?

To your question: It’s exceedingly difficult to come up with a plausible set of November results that get Democrats to 26. Even if they were to sweep all districts on Bolts’ cheat sheet of competitive U.S. House races, they would only get to 23 delegations.

Democrats face many obstacles here. For one, the more sparsely populated states lean red, the same structural issue that skews the U.S. Senate to the GOP. Just like in the Senate, the blue bastion of D.C. has no congressional representation. Plus, while North Carolina’s delegation is currently tied, the GOP redrew the state map with an aggressive gerrymander that guarantees it will gain a clear edge.

A more worthwhile question is: Could the GOP slip below 26? This would happen if delegations end up tied, effectively canceling out their votes entirely and preventing the House from choosing any winner. (In such a scenario, the Vice President-Elect, chosen by the U.S. Senate, becomes the acting president.)

Even for this goal, Democrats need a lot to go right for them. Accounting for the GOP’s likely gain of North Carolina, they need to defend their vulnerable seats in Alaska, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and gain enough seats to erase the GOP’s majorities in two of these four state delegations: Arizona, Iowa, Montana, and Wisconsin.

The basic issue here: You’d expect House Democrats to only pull off such a sweep if the election cycle is very favorable to them—if their base turns out much more, for instance, or if undecided voters swing their way. But if the presidential race is so tight that it’s been thrown to the House, that’s probably not what election night looks like down ballot.

What happens if you walk into the wrong polling place by mistake? — @sommersmurf on BlueSky

If you realize that you’re in the wrong polling place, poll workers may be able to identify where you should go, and you may still have time to head to the correct location. But things may not be so simple. Maybe poll workers say they don’t know where you’re supposed to vote, or you believe your name was removed from voter rolls incorrectly, or there’s just no more time. Some states are also prone to cut polling places at the last minute, creating confusion.

At that point, you can ask to cast a provisional ballot. (This option exists in every state other than Idaho and Minnesota, both of which offer same-day registration, which mitigates this issue.) A provisional ballot is one that’s put aside pending verification of a voter’s eligibility.

But what happens next varies greatly by state: If local officials end up confirming that you did cast a provisional ballot in the wrong polling place, there’s a big range in what they’ll do with it.

Broadly speaking, they fall in two big categories. They could count your vote for all the races you were eligible for: If you went a neighborhood over, you may have cast a vote in the wrong city council race, but why should your vote for governor or president also be tossed?

But some states don’t even allow such a partial count. They completely reject a provisional if a voter casts it in the wrong place. Nothing is salvaged. This approach of fully rejecting provisionals “makes no sense,” says John Sherman, an attorney with the Fair Election Center who has written on the issue. “It’s totally irrational to reject people’s federal and statewide choices when they would be eligible to vote in those races anywhere in the state.”

You can find a comprehensive breakdown on which side each state falls in on Ballotpedia.

To reduce these risks, many states have set up at-large voting centers: These are polling places that can accommodate people living anywhere in a county or a city. Chicago calls them “supersites.” Such centers are common during the early voting period; some places also set them up on Election Day.

“(At-large) voting centers are a major boost for turnout, particularly for low-propensity voters,” says Sherman, pointing to the research into their effects. “They are more convenient locations, and bigger and more accessible.”

But like so much else about how we vote, these rules are caught up in restrictions and litigation that sometimes produce a strange mismash.

Take Arizona. On Election Day, this state uses at-large county centers, and simultaneously it uses precincts, much smaller locations that each voter is assigned to. On Nov. 5, there will be 246 at-large locations dispersed across the sprawling Maricopa County where people can vote regardless of where they live in the county. But if they go to a precinct location, and get it wrong, the state shows no mercy: Republicans passed a law that requires officials to toss provisionals cast in the incorrect location in their entirety—no partial count. Democrats sued but lost in a landmark Supreme Court case in 2021. This year, the GOP tried to ban the at-large centers as well, blaming them with no evidence for voter fraud, but they fell short.

I live in a pretty rural town in Virginia. I spent almost 2 hours the other day trying to research our local candidates’ platforms and it was basically fruitless. By the end I was poring through their LinkedIn profiles and the Facebook accounts of their various relatives trying to learn ANYTHING. Shouldn’t every candidate have to have a website with their platform?! — @usetyourloafman on Threads

I’ve shared your experience as a voter—and also as a journalist covering races that touch the criminal legal system, like prosecutors and sheriffs. Many candidates running for these offices avoid sharing their policies. They also sometimes insist they shouldn’t have to answer policy questions because they’re just running to apply the law, a response that ignores the vast discretion they’ll inherit.

In a past election cycle, I reached out to dozens of candidates running for sheriff in Texas about whether they planned to assist ICE with immigration enforcement as part of the agency’s 278(g) program, which is a key policy question that sheriffs control. Few responded. One replied with, “I do not think it is appropriate for me to speak about specific program recommendations for the sheriff’s office until I am sheriff.” (This candidate lost, by the way.)

Journalists here play an important role in asking candidates about their views, and many newsrooms have created extensive guides to help people navigate their local ballots.

Nonpartisan groups like the League of Women Voters also publish candidate questionnaires and organize forums—though candidates will often decline to participate. And advocacy organizations may also want to pin them down about their commitment.

Leslie Cushman, an advocate with the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, a group that’s talking to candidates in a local sheriff’s race, talked to me recently about why it’s important to her to press local candidates for answers. “We’ll ask them to get their policies in writing,” she said. “That’s the only way you can hold a candidate accountable, is if they violated a policy. If you don’t have a policy, then there’s nothing to measure anything against.”nherit.

In my state, Michigan, commissioners choose boards of canvassers. When we almost refused to certify our 2020 elections, people were furious and asked, how did these canvassers get their jobs? Now, I can’t seem to get people to care. Can you explain the significance of this and other downballot offices that can have major effects on elections? Roles that may not be obvious for their importance but are very much so? — Stacey, from Michigan

“Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate,” Trump told Pennsylvania Republicans two years ago. His efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, from telling the Georgia secretary of state to “find” him thousands of votes, to his team’s hope that local officials would delay certification to create what they called a “cloud of confusion,” relied on the complicity of people sitting on local and state boards.

This is why Bolts created a resource, “Who Counts Our Elections,” that details who processes, counts, and certifies results in each state, and how they come to be in office. Here readers can learn, in their state, what offices play what role in this process.

In Michigan counties, for instance, local commissioners appoint the members of the canvassing board. In Pennsylvania, elected commissioners double as a board of elections. In Florida, three local officials come together to act as a certifying board. There are also separate statewide offices to finalize the results in each. To make matters more complicated, the officials who handle elections in the runup to election night may be different than those who handle the count; we have compiled state-by-state information on who runs elections in a separate resource.

And many of these election officials are elected themselves.

In 2022, election deniers tried to take over elections offices but largely lost. Still, some sitting officials have signaled an openness to stretching their role and helping the GOP. If they act on it, it’d be up to state officials and courts to intervene and keep the count running smoothly.

And this fall, there are still more downballot races that may hand election systems to election deniers. This includes the statewide races in Oregon and Missouri, and local races in Arizona’s all-important Maricopa County (Phoenix) and across the state of Florida.

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