City councils around Dallas County are preparing to meet for the first time in 2018, and in many cases there will be a lot of new faces at the table. In some instances, those individuals took a slightly different route to public office: the write-in vote.

In four Dallas County cities — Bouton, Dexter, Linden, and Minburn — there were no registered candidates for the council or mayor positions in the recent election, so write-in votes became necessities. In two cases the results were fairly cut-and-dry. In Bouton, Mike Miner received 12 votes for the open at-large council seat, while Tim Hudspeth received 14 votes for mayor. In Dexter, Tom Stiles was written-in on 58 ballots, which placed him on their city council.

The two other cities got more complicated. In Minburn, there were three at-large seats open on their city council and one seat to fill a vacancy. Ron Allen received 20 write-in votes and Charlotte White received 11 to fill two of the at-large seats, while Nick Leerhoff received 4 votes to fill the vacancy. The third council seat will be filled by Phyllis Moss, who tied with Kaleb Sharp with 3 votes, but was selected by random drawing. However, Sharp had received two other votes where his name was spelled incorrectly, costing him the seat.

Meanwhile in Linden, Dave Hutchins received 14 votes to fill the vacant mayor position, but wound up declining the appointment. The second place write-in, Korey Maynes with 4 votes, didn’t respond to the Auditor’s Office. No other candidate received enough votes for consideration, so Linden remains without a mayor. Dallas County Auditor Julia Helm told Raccoon Valley Radio the Linden City Council can either appoint a mayor, or have a special election in the coming months, which could cost the City a lot of money.