One Name on the Ballot.

A ballot with nothing to decide

Johnston County, North Carolina, has about 37,000 students and three school board seats on Tuesday's ballot. Each seat has one name under it, and each name belongs to the member already holding it. A voter there can fill in the oval or skip it, and the board will look the same on Wednesday. The real decision came when the filing period closed last winter and nobody else signed up.

That is the ballot in 1,453 of the 3,463 school board races counted here, 42%. The count covers every regular school board race on the November 3, 2026 ballot in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia, the District of Columbia and Chicago, read from each state's official candidate list. These are the places where the filing for every district that elects this year is on record, so the squares above are the whole ballot and not a sample of it.

One name is the strict reading. Many boards fill several seats in one race, and when three people file for three seats the outcome is just as settled as when one person files for one. Where the ballot or the filing list prints how many seats a race fills, 1,843 of 2,965 races had no more names than seats, 62%. The lists in Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky leave that number off some at-large races, so a part of the count cannot be read either way. If every one of those turned out to be a contest, the share would still be 53%.

Who is the one name? In 708 of those races it is the sitting member, about half. In the rest someone new takes a seat on the board without facing a vote. Nine races have no name at all, and those seats will be filled by appointment or a later special election.

Where the seats were settled early

Alabama's county boards elect by district, one seat at a time, and 93 of their 102 races carry one name. Bossier Parish, Louisiana, puts all twelve of its seats on the ballot at once, and every one of them has a single name under it. Louisiana does that in every parish, so its 57% describes whole boards rather than the few seats up in a given year. Indiana, Kentucky and Utah land between 60% and 79%.

Minnesota looks different on the chart because its boards mostly elect three or four at-large seats in a single race. Only 28 of its 328 races have one name, but 45% have no more names than seats. Michigan prints no seat labels at all. A race there reads "6 Year Term, vote for not more than 3," and the sample ballot supplies the count. Where it does, 63% of Michigan's races had no contest.

The contested end of the chart is urban. Virginia's November boards are its cities, Virginia Beach and Arlington among them, and 72% of their races have a contest. Wake County, North Carolina, has 11 names for 4 seats. Louisville's Jefferson County board has 36 names for 10 seats. Chicago and the District of Columbia are single boards, and most of their seats have a contest.

Town and country

Inside each state the pattern runs the way post No. 1 would predict. Rural districts had no contest in 66% of their races and city districts in 47%, with towns and suburbs in between. Rural districts also hold most of the races, 1,983 of the 3,463, because they hold most of the boards. The rural share sits above the city share in six of the eight places with enough races on both sides to compare; in Louisiana and Utah the two are about level.

Whole boards

Take it down to the district. In 573 of them, every school board race on the ballot has no contest, and together they enroll 1.4 million students. Johnston County is one. So are Baldwin County, Alabama and Pitt County, North Carolina. In 268 districts every race has exactly one name. At the other end, 389 districts have a contest in every race, Wake County and Louisville among them.

Size runs the same way as locale. In districts with fewer than 1,000 students, 69% of races had no contest, and the share eases down through the middle of the range. It drops at 25,000 students and up, to 40%, the only group where a contest is the usual case.

The crowded end

Where there is a contest, it is usually two names, 872 races. The long end is thin but real. Vernon Parish, Louisiana, has ten names for one seat in District 1. Cumberland County, North Carolina, has sixteen for three at-large seats. Across the races where the seat count is printed there are 1.39 candidates per seat.

Chicago votes on the whole board for the first time

Chicago has never elected its full Board of Education. The mayor appointed it for more than a century, half of it was elected in 2024, and on November 3, 2026 the city fills the whole board: a president chosen citywide and twenty subdistrict members. There are 44 names for 21 seats. Five subdistricts drew one candidate and are settled already. The presidency drew five. For 324,000 students it is the first time anyone has voted on who runs their schools.

What eleven places say about the rest

These places hold 14% of the country's regular school districts and 19% of its students. They are here because their records are complete, not because they stand in for the other states, and nothing on this page is a national figure. Inside them, the rural share sits above the city share nearly everywhere, and the share falls as districts grow. The incumbent is the only name in about half of the one-name races.

The one outside count that uses the same rule is Ballotpedia's review of the elections it covered in 2025, 29 states and mostly larger districts: 36% of 546 seats were uncontested, with 1.8 candidates per seat. Our four-state case study of 2026 filings, which includes Florida's August primary, found the same shape.

What the count leaves out

Turnout and results, since the election has not happened. Whether an uncontested seat means people are satisfied or that nobody asked them to run; this page counts names. The 498 races for several seats where the filing list does not print how many, which are in the totals and out of the no-contest share. No state and no board is ranked.