Dahlgren running write-in campaign for state rep nomination

As voters who requested absentee ballots begin to receive their ballots for the August primary election and examine the list of candidates, they may notice a name missing from the Democratic slate.

When the initial list of candidates was released in April, John Dahlgren of Clinton was the lone Democrat running for the nomination to be the next state representative in District 34. It appeared that he would end up in a rematch of the 2024 election against incumbent Republican state Rep. Nancy Jenkins-Arno of Clayton.

That might still be the case, but Dahlgren finds himself having to run a write-in campaign due to an unpaid fee from the 2024 election that kept his name off this year’s primary election ballot.

“It was determined that at the time of filing his affidavit of identity that he had outstanding campaign finance late fees due to the Department of the State,” said Lenawee County Election Coordinator Michelle Bates. “Therefore, it disqualified him because there’s election law that states a candidate who owes filing fees or reports must not be certified to the ballot.”

Dahlgren said the state Bureau of Elections fined him $25 for a late campaign finance report in July 2024, though he doesn’t know what was late about it. However, the state didn’t send him a bill for the $25 until February 2025 and the bill appears to have disappeared somewhere between Lansing and Dahlgren’s mailbox.

“I never received the bill,” he said. “You know, 25 bucks, I would have paid it automatically, especially when it’s the state. I don’t need them coming after me for 25 bucks.”

This spring, the Lenawee County Democratic Party asked him to run again at the last minute and he agreed, Dahlgren said. Former Tecumseh City Council member Austin See also had filed to run as a Democrat, but he withdrew after Dahlgren filed.

“So I went down, I filled out all the paperwork, and I signed a paper stating that, to the best of my knowledge, I had no outstanding debts with the state, and as far as I knew, I didn’t, but it turns out I did,” he said. “And because I signed that paper, they said that I violated a law, so I was ineligible to be on the ballot.”

So now he’s running a write-in campaign. As he campaigns, he’s been handing out business cards that explain how to do a write-in vote, and he has more cards ordered.

To vote for Dahlgren in the Democratic primary, voters will have to write in his name — John E. Dahlgren — in the blank space for the 34th District representative and fill in the oval next to that space. Filling in the oval will tell the vote tabulator machine that there is a vote there. The ballots will then be reviewed by the county Board of Canvassers to determine how many write-in votes there were and who the votes are for.

Whether Dahlgren gets nominated to advance to the general election in November isn’t simply a matter of him receiving any votes, assuming no other Democrat also runs as a write-in candidate. According to the Michigan Bureau of Elections’ manual for election officials, in a partisan primary election, a write-in candidate has to receive a certain number of votes to be nominated. In Dahlgren’s case, he likely will have to get 5% of the total number of votes cast in either the primary for governor or U.S. Senate, whichever is greater. There are some other formulas, but the rules call for whichever formula leads to the greatest number of votes to be used.

If the number of votes Dahlgren receives reaches that threshold, his name would appear on the ballot for the election in November.