What do former televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, the late Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett and cartoon icon Mickey Mouse have in common?
Clallam County voters gave each of them a vote in the Nov. 7 contest for Washington’s U.S. Senate seat.
It was a general election that saw ballots allowing easy access to the write-in line, plenty of uncontested races, voters with something on their minds, and elections workers forced to plug away through the weekend to record all the write-in votes.
All 4,830 of them, according to a Peninsula Daily News analysis of final write-in numbers provided by the Clallam County Auditor’s Office.
“We’re getting more, but mainly because of the new ballot style,” said Elections Coordinator Patty Rosand.
“It bogs it down a lot.”
Jokes wore thin
Some of the votes are funny, like the single chits for My Dog and Ineeda Vote. Barney Fife got four votes for sheriff, “Manson Charles” got one.
But elections workers who spent their Saturday and Sunday before the Nov. 7 election recording the write-in votes found that the jokes wore thin.
“Every once in a while a name comes through that makes you laugh,” said Shoona Radon, Clallam County elections assistant.
“But I don’t know. You get kind of blind to it after a while.”
However meaningless, the names have to be recorded, she said.
No write-in candidates
No write-in candidates filed in Clallam County.
However, a write-in candidate with an unusual or familiar name may have registered in Olympia as a write-in candidate for a jurisdiction that includes more counties than Clallam.
Such is the case of Rush Limbaugh, who earned a vote for the state Legislature seat occupied by Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquim.
There’s the talk show host Rush Limbaugh, but . . .
“That doesn’t mean a Rush Limbaugh doesn’t live down the street from me,” Radon said.
“I know what they mean, but who am I to say?”
Each ballot with a checked write-in box had to be visually inspected and recorded.
At about three or four minutes a piece, the task was overwhelming.
“My words were, `Oh my god, here we go,”‘ Radon said.
Radon got a reprieve when the secretary of state, the state’s top election official, said on Nov. 8 that officials didn’t have to record “nonperson” write-ins, such as “none of the above.”
But names had to be recorded.