Voting is usually a multiple-choice experience, but several spots on Richmond ballots were a fill-in-the-blank test, and in Charlestown a former Town Council president who wasn’t running for anything this year was surprised to learn she had won a seat on the Chariho School Committee.

Deborah A. Carney, who served from 2002 to 2006 on the Charlestown council, some as president, got unofficial word yesterday that about 13 voters had written her name where there were no names on the ballot for Chariho School Committee Town of Charlestown.

She apparently won the seat that is being vacated by Giancarlo Cicchetti, who himself was shoo-ed in by write-in four years ago.

“I did not seek the office,” Carney said yesterday. “Imagine my surprise.” It didn’t come as a complete surprise. “A couple of people approached me and said, ‘I’ve been told to vote for you.’ ” She couldn’t figure who was behind it, she said, adding that she had urged people to write in Cicchetti’s name for another term.

Whether she will serve is another question. “I will definitely need to discuss it with my family,” she said yesterday, explaining that she left public service in 2006 because she was missing time with her husband and son, who is now 14.

Richmond had two Chariho School Committee seats to fill and only one candidate, William G. Day, a Republican who has served since 1995, most recently as chairman. He was re-elected with 2,618 votes, according to unofficial results reported yesterday by the state Board of Elections after mail ballots were added to Tuesday night’s machine totals.

Michelle Cole, a mother of three and a Chariho graduate, planned to run next year, she said, but when she saw that one of Richmond’s seats was going un-run-for, she launched a write-in campaign.

She called Town Hall yesterday to see whether the write-in ballots had been counted. Apparently 94 voters closed the arrow correctly and wrote in Cole’s name legibly enough. She won.

In addition to legitimate write-in ballots, election officials spent more than an hour Wednesday tallying profane, obscene or ridiculous write-in ballots.

And in some cases, the highest vote-getter seems to have been nobody.

No one ran for the Tax Assessment Board of Review. “We haven’t had anyone actually run for that in years,” assistant clerk Tracy Nelson Hay said yesterday. Several people received two or three votes, she said, but for the highest vote-getter, many voters drew a line to connect the arrow but then drew a blank when it came to writing in a name.

dnaylor@projo.com