(That's what Sen. Lisa Murkowski had to do in Alaska back in 2010 to get re-elected, following her shocking defeat at the hands of a far-right nutball in that year's low-turnout GOP Senate primary.)

At that point, once approved, that candidate would then have to provide the state with a designated slate of electors, who would be certified by the governor were that candidate to somehow win.

Otherwise, were you to write in the name of someone who hasn't officially registered with the state as a write-in candidate, as John McCain did by writing in Lindsay Graham on his Arizona ballot, then it will be tallied and recorded as a blank vote.

Abdul: "They were counted as 3/5 rather than a whole human in order to reduce the number of electors from slave states.  If they were counted as whole persons the slave states would have even more electors."

... your contention of "BS." In the United States of 1787, African-American slaves were not considered the equal of whites and did not have citizenship. The initial intent of most Founding Fathers from the northern states, where slavery at that time was on the wane, was to not even count them at all.

The Constitutional Convention in Phliadelphia had initially and unanimously unanimously agreed that representation in the U.S. House of Representatives would be in proportion to the relative state populations. Where they got hung up was in the definition of "population" for purposes of representation and taxation, and whether that included everybody who resided physically in the states -- slave and non-slave alike -- or just actual citizens.

Because slaves were not citizens and therefore could not vote, delegates from northern states argued that the southern states would enjoy the undue benefit of grossly disproportionate representation in the House and the Electoral College, relative to the actual numbers of free white citizens in that region.

Delegates opposed to slavery further proposed that only free inhabitants of each state be counted for purposes of legislative apportionment. For their part, delegates supportive of the "peculiar institution" vehemently opposed the proposal, wanting slaves -- who constituted about 40-45% of the south's population -- to count in their actual numbers.

The so-called "Three-Fifths Compromise," as it was was finally agreed upon, allowed for the counting of "all other persons" as only three-fifths of their actual numbers, which reduced the representation of the slave states relative to the original proposals, but marked a significant improvement over the initial northern position.

To induce delegates from southern slave states to accept the compromise, northern delegates agreed to link taxation in the same ratio, so that the resultant tax burden on white citizens in the southern slaveholding states was also much reduced from that which existed in the northern part of the country.

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
- Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 3, The Constitution of the United States

(Defining "population" for purposes of legislative and congressional redistricting is an argument which we recently had in variations in Hawaii, albeit without the slaves. In 2011 during the redistricting process, that debate centered on our large military / military dependent population on Oahu -- which constitutes 10-15% of the island's numbers -- and whether or not they should be counted for such purposes, since the vast majority of them never register to vote in our state. Our state supreme court ruled in 2013 that we must include them.)