paper candidate

plural paper candidates

1. An election candidate with little chance of winning, who runs a minimal or no campaign, and who is added to the ballot for publicity, to increase the number of candidates standing and/or try to ensure their party has a candidate in every electoral district.

   The concern is that groups, including advocacy groups, could register as parties simply by fielding a paper candidate and complying with reporting requirements.

   2003 November 7, Don Boudria, House of Commons Debates, Official Report, Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, Queen's Printer and Controller of Stationery, →ISSN, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   Mr. Kent. I never knew of any actual Democratic opponent to a Republican candidate for Congress in Philadelphia for a number of years, but there may have been some "paper candidate" set up.

   1928, James M. Beck Election Case, First District of Pennsylvania: Hearings before the Committee on Elections No. 2, House of Representatives, Seventieth Congress, First Session: By Authority of House Resolution No. 9, part II (Law Arguments), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 126

   One Labour candidate in a safe seat believed that his Liberal Democrat opponent was nothing but a ‘paper candidate’, while the Conservatives’ candidate in Scotland reported that his local party had been asked ‘not to canvass but to send people to key seats’; the opposition parties did likewise and were ‘almost nowhere to be seen’.

   1997, David [Edgeworth] Butler, Dennis Kavanagh, “Constituency Campaigning”, in The British General Election of 1997, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 211

   A contest appears inevitable, even if he is running against a paper candidate such as Lynne Jones, and the chancellor has put in the groundwork necessary to mount a spirited and successful campaign.

   2006, The Parliamentary Monitor, numbers 135–138, London: Parliamentary Communications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 74