ALPENA — Voters in Northeast Michigan will have several write-in candidates to consider when voting in the Nov. 5 presidential elections.

Friday afternoon was the deadline for individuals to file to run as write-in candidates. Write-in candidates will not see their names on the ballot and voters will have to write their names down to support them.

Clerks record votes for candidates exactly as written, so it’s important for voters who want to support the write-in candidates to spell the name of the candidate exactly as the candidate wrote it when filing candidacy papers at the clerk’s office.

Absentee voting is ongoing in Michigan and early voting begins today.

In Alpena County alone, seven people filed to run as write-ins, four of them trying to win a seat on the Alpena County Board of Commissioners.

Stephanie Woytaszek is running for the District 1 seat and will need to receive more votes than Republican incumbent Bill LaHaie and independent Jeff Welch.

JoAnn Pinkerton, who said she is a Republican, hopes voters in District 3 will write her name on their ballot to help her defeat Lucille Bray, who is running as an independent.

The race for District 4 commissioner is between Republican incumbent Bill Peterson and write-in candidate Brian Perry.

Carol Bobolts is running as a write-in trying to defeat incumbent Brenda Fournier, a Republican who represents the county’s District 5.

Elsewhere in Alpena County, Kendall Sumerix filed as a write-in candidate for a seat on the Green Township Board of Trustees. Two seats are open on that board and only one candidate will appear on the ballot, meaning Sumerix is all but guaranteed to earn a seat.

And Alpena County resident Renee Fisher has thrown her name into the mix for one of the three open seats on the Alpena Public Schools Board of Education.

Fisher hopes to get enough write-in votes to claim one of the seats from incumbents Gordon Snow or Eric Lawson or newcomers Sarah Costain and Monica Dziesinski.

In Hillman Community Schools, the recent death of incumbent trustee candidate Jack Matthias has scrambled the local school board race.

Matthias still will appear on the ballot because ballots already have been printed. If voters choose him to fill one of the four seats up for grabs, it would be up to the Hillman school board to appoint someone to fill the vacancy after the election. Hillman Superintendent Pamela Rader said Friday a current trustee who had planned to step down from the board agreed to stay on.

However, voters will have four choices for the four seats, because Laurie Nugent, a former longtime Hillman substitute teacher and teacher and current early college coordinator in Alpena, has filed to run as a write-in candidate. She would have to receive enough write-in votes to outnumber the votes cast for Matthias or one of the other candidates — George Kearns, incumbent Roxanne LaFleche, or David Picklehaupt II — to win the seat.

In Alcona County, Willam Thompson filed to run as a write-in candidate against Republican incumbent Craig Johnston, who defeated Thompson in the August primary.

In Presque Isle County’s Presque Isle Township, write-in candidate Larry Fields seeks a seat on the township board, which has a pair of seats up for grabs. Fields will try to defeat Democrat Mary O’Neill or Lyn Loheed, an independent, to win a seat.

In Posen, Brian Adams is running as a write-in candidate against John Ataman for village president.

Voters must decide who they want to fill the four seats on the Posen Consolidated School District board. Michael Romanowski filed to run as a write-in candidate against Jesse Chappa, Brian Konieczny, Miranda Puro, and Angela Szatkowski.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 or sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on X @ss_alpenanews.com.