The sinking feeling that Bexley Auditor Larry Heiser felt in his stomach started a few weeks ago.

That was when he and the City Council president were chatting about their runs for re-election, and the councilman offhandedly mentioned the back page of a form that candidates had to file to get on the November ballot.

"What back page?" Heiser thought.

"It was a casual conversation that went to heartache real quick," Heiser said.

He soon found out that his failure to sign the back before submitting the form to the Franklin County Board of Elections will keep him off the ballot.

He's not the only one.

The board has an unusual number of races this year in which candidates -- including some incumbents -- won't appear on the November ballot because of technical mistakes, said Matt Damschroder, deputy director of the board.

As a result there are four races in which either write-in candidates only appear on the ballot or no one at all. The deadline to petition for a spot on the ballot was Aug. 20, and yesterday was the last day to declare candidacy as a write-in.

Five candidates filed to run as write-ins for the unexpired two-year seat of former Columbus school board member Terry Boyd that was filled by board member Bryan O. Steward. But Steward failed to get enough valid signatures and won't be running -- not even as a write-in -- to keep that seat.

Instead, incumbent board President Carol L. Perkins, who was knocked off the ballot for technical problems, will run as a write-in candidate for the two-year job. Also filing for the seat: Paul Timothy Carringer, Lemuel E. Harrison, Stephen Johnson and Charles Taylor.

Ken Strickland of Sunbury, meanwhile, applied as a write-in for the Union/Delaware subdistrict of the Educational Service Center for Central Ohio board. Service Center Superintendent Bart Anderson said Strickland had applied to be on the ballot, but did not have enough valid signatures.

Grove City had three people chasing its Ward 3 City Council seat, including incumbent Richard C. Rutherford. But all of them were removed from the ballot for incomplete paperwork.

Two of them then applied as write-ins, but Damschroder said the law requires they be denied. That means the city has no candidate for the position and city officials could not be reached yesterday to say how it will be filled.

Heiser was the only candidate for Bexley auditor.

Bexley's service director, Bill Harvey, who has a degree in finance, said he immediately filed as a write-in candidate.

"I didn't want some unqualified person winning by default because no one else filed, and then we'd have to deal with it for four years," Harvey said.

Former city auditor Gary Qualmann, who lost the last election to Heiser, also submitted himself as a write-in yesterday. Heiser said the law needs to be changed for future races, but he won't protest his situation because there are qualified candidates.

The trouble comes from a 2002 law. It essentially says that a person can't be a write-in candidate in a municipal election if he already filed to be on the ballot for the same election.

Bexley resident Donald Tobin, an associate dean at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law, said the intent of the law seems to be to keep somebody from running in two forms, or running in the general election as a write-in after losing in the primary.

An advisory from Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's office in 2007 said the law applies to people who have filed to run for an office, even if that filing was rejected and they never actually were on a ballot.

The result, Tobin said, is that people who make a technical error on a petition to run get tossed out.

"You have a law that is being interpreted in a way that actually hurts the process," he said. "The people who lose are not just the candidate, but also the people who wanted to elect that candidate."

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