Jerri Harman is back on the school board in Bland County.
She was first elected in 2014. She ran again in 2017 and 2021, but lost both times. In 2021, she was one of three people vying for the Rocky Gap District seat.
That wasn’t the case this time. “The general assumption was that someone would officially file to run by the June 17, 2025 deadline,” Harman said by email. By the time it was evident no one was going to get the signatures required to get on the ballot, she said, it was too late for her to try.
In August, Harman, who manages her family’s farm, launched a write-in campaign.
“I felt at this point in time that the Bland County School Division needed someone on the School Board who has experience dealing with complex issues,” Harman said, including creating and balancing budgets and overseeing large projects. She said the school division is facing an enrollment decline and aging infrastructure. The board also needed “someone who can work with the Bland County Board of Supervisors to find a solution to the current needs that is viable and affordable for Bland County,” she said.
Harman had been the chair for her entire previous term on the school board. During that time, the school division consolidated Bland and Rocky Gap high schools.
Only 306 of the more than 1,200 registered voters in the Rocky Gap District wrote a name on their ballots for the open school board seat. Harman won with 52% of those write-in votes.
She’s one of at least eight newly elected school board members around the state this month who won via write-in.
Write-in candidates becoming more common in some rural areas
Harman said she was aware of one other person who had chosen to run as a write-in for the Rocky Gap seat.
The method “definitely has drawbacks,” she said. “Many times, voters are not aware of who is running; they skip over that particular office on the ballot, since there is not a name listed.” If someone does submit a name, they’ve got to write it down correctly.
“It’s harder to run as a write-in,” Lennon Counts, the registrar of nearby Wythe County, agreed.
It also takes longer to confirm the winner, Counts said. Forty-one different valid names were submitted for the Lead Mines District school board seat won by Pamela Blair this election. Blair got 86% of the write-in votes. The next two top vote-getters after Blair received “only four or five votes each.”
Blair, an assistant principal in Grayson County, had already notified the registrar’s office that she was running as a write-in, Counts said. “I still needed to ask, ‘You do want this, right?’” when he called to tell her she’d won, to make sure Blair accepted the role, Counts said. Write-in candidates have the option to turn down the position if they win.
Blair did not respond to messages requesting comment for this story.
Typically, about half of school board races across Virginia only have one candidate on the ballot. That rate is similar nationwide, according to data from Ballotpedia. The Virginia Department of Elections does not maintain a list of write-in-only races, a spokesperson said.
Counts said that he’s seen write-in campaigns gain popularity since he started as Wythe County’s registrar in 2019. While candidates who want to officially be on the ballot must collect petition signatures from voters and submit regular campaign finance reports, write-in candidates don’t have those up-front obligations.
Write-in candidates must file documents including campaign finance reports if they receive donations or spend money on their campaign.
Counts said he could see why running as a write-in might be more attractive for some would-be candidates living in rural areas.
In most cases, candidates for local office must submit 125 signatures from registered voters in order to get on the ballot. Candidates have a few months to collect those signatures, but when homes are spread out across a rural voting district, it can be hard to make a dent without a community event on the calendar that brings people out en masse.
Counts said an incumbent running for the county board of supervisors in 2025 hung out at a gas station for several hours to ask people to sign his candidate petition forms while they were filling up. Some people would refuse because they weren’t used to being asked to sign a petition, Counts said.
Determining a write-in winner takes time
In Bland County, Harman said she knew it would take several days for the local electoral board to count write-in votes. She said she found out she’d won when a friend sent her a text message.
Over in Franklin County, write-in candidate Jerry Conner figured out he had won by sitting in on the vote count as an elections observer. He knew how many votes he would need to win the Boone District seat, for which no candidate had been listed on the ballot.
On Nov. 11, three days before the county elections board confirmed the results, Conner put out a press release declaring himself the winner with an estimated 68% of the vote. The final tally showed he won 61% of write-in ballots over Dawn McCray, the incumbent, who also ran as a write-in candidate because she hadn’t originally planned to run for the school board again.
“I was starting to get a bit antsy, waiting for the word,” Conner said.
Conner, who runs a hydroponic greenhouse, only announced in October that he was running for school board, after realizing no one was on the ballot for the Boone District seat.
“I felt like somebody should try to represent and get out there and talk to people, and try to represent the district for our schools,” Conner said. “I thought there was somebody on the ballot and there wasn’t.”
He talked it over with a group of friends and launched his campaign: getting literature printed, ordering postcard mailers and knocking on doors. A week before the election, he paid for a texting campaign. Conner said he knocked on about 300 doors himself, and with the help of friends, visited close to 1,000 homes total.
His campaign material specified that voters should write in his full name, “Gerald W. ‘Jerry’ Conner.”
When he figured out he had won, “I was a little bit surprised to be honest with you,” he said.
He’s already filled out most of the campaign finance forms required of winning write-in candidates that are due Dec. 1, he said. Conner is awaiting details about getting sworn in, and said he suspects there will be some mandatory reading to complete.
Additional write-in winners for school board seats:
Appomattox County:
- Courthouse District: Daniel Richardson, 85.5%
Greene County:
- Stanardsville District: Rebecca Roach, 44.5%
- Midway District: David Mastervich, 53%
Lunenburg County:
- District 3: Karen Champion, 52%
Page County:
- District 1: Daniel Bogdewic, 47%
Correction Nov. 25, 3:30 p.m.: This story has been corrected to provide more information on campaign finance reporting expectations for write-in candidates.