How to print getter String without getting null as output?

Question

I get the null value whenever I use showMessage(); I believe that it is because of me returning c at the end of the method. Are there any way to print out getName() without it being in main method, as in getName() being in the showMessage() method. . Here is my Candidate class

public class Candidate {

private String name;
private int votes;

//default constructor
public Candidate() {

String name = "Not Available! ";
int votes = 0; 
}

//overloaded constructor
public Candidate(String _name, int _votes){
  name  = _name;
  votes = _votes;

}

//getter
public String getName(){return name;}
public int getVotes(){return votes;}

//setter

public void incrementVote(){
  votes = votes + 1;

}

public void setName(String _name){
    name =_name;
}

public void print(){

    System.out.println("To vote for " + name);


}
}

Here is my main

import java.util.*;

public class Election {
public static void main(String args[]){

System.out.println("Welcome to the polls! ");

 Candidate c1 = new Candidate();
 Candidate c2 = new Candidate();
 Candidate c3 = new Candidate();
 Candidate c4 = new Candidate();


c1 = inputCandidate();
c2 = inputCandidate();
c3 = inputCandidate();
c4 = inputCandidate();



c1 = showMessage();

}

private static Candidate inputCandidate(){
    Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
    String inputN;

    Candidate c = new Candidate();

    System.out.println("Enter candidate");

    inputN = sc.nextLine();
    c.setName(inputN);

   return c;
}

private static Candidate showMessage(){
    Candidate c = new Candidate();

    System.out.println(c.getName());

    return c;
}


}

Answer 1

just replace

c1 = showMessage();

with,

showMessage(c1);

and modify method showMessage like the following

private static void showMessage(Candidate c ){    

    System.out.println(c.getName());
}

so similarly, you can use showMessage to print messages for remaining objects like

showMessage(c2);
showMessage(c3);
showMessage(c4);