Pismo Beach attorney Dennis Morris believes he's found a way to still get on tne November ballot as a Democratic opponent for 15th District State Senator Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria).

Morris, who previously attempted to get onto the ballot through a write-in vote in the June 3 primary, said he's found a provision of elections law that may get him there.

Section 8605(c) of the California Elections Code allows a write-in candidate's name to be placed on the general election ballot if a party's central committee puts the write-in candidate there to fill a vacancy, and if the candidate appeared as a write-in on the primary ballot, as Morris did.

No Democrats filed formal paperwork to run against Maldonado in the 15th district, which stretches over wealthy areas along the Pacific coast in five counties.

Morris, making his first try at elected office, qualified for the ballot as a write-in for the primary. With votes in the portion of the district in Santa Clara County still not fully counted, Morris appears to have fallen short of the requirement to get write-in votes equal to 1 percent of all votes cast for that office in the last general election for that office, in this case November 2004.

That meant Morris needed about 3,600 votes, but looks to have only received a little over 2,000.

Under the provision Morris is putting his hopes on now, Democratic Central Committees in all five 15th District counties - Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara - would have to put him on the ballot in their counties.

Morris said he believes the committees would do that.

"I think in all the counties I visited, I got a warm and favorable reception," Morris said.

Morris believes he'll receive a definitive answer on whether he can qualify for the ballot with the committees' help in the next few days.

A spokeswoman for the California Secretary of State's office said such a matter would be referred to outside counsel for an opinion.

If that effort and the write-in effort both fail, Morris said, he's already looking ahead to 2012, when Maldonado will be termed out of office in what is now a potential swing seat.

"We're looking at a four-year plan on this," Morris said, though he did not rule out the possibility of running for an Assembly seat sooner if the opportunity came up.