We know who won last Tuesday’s presidential election, but that doesn’t tell us the entire scope of the vote. What about the write-in candidates, you say? No worries, we have the list of write in votes for President in Gwinnett County, all 138 pages of them. That works out to 4,819 write in votes, a fairly small number when you consider that 330,409 ballots were cast in the county.
Leading the write-in vote was independent candidate Evan McMullin, with 1570 votes. McMullin entered the race at the last minute, presented as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump. McMullin was followed by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, with 879 votes. After failing to receive enough signatures to make the ballot, Stein registered as an official write in candidate. Democratic primary runner up Bernie Sanders got 593 votes, while Ohio Governor John Kasich got 157 votes.
Other GOP primary candidates who ultimately fell to the Trump campaign earned write in votes. Marco Rubio received 112 votes, Ted Cruz got 54 votes, Ben Carson got 49 votes, and Jeb Bush earned 26. Rand Paul was right behind Bush with 23 votes. Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee each got five votes, while Gov. Rick Perry got 2 votes and Gov. Scott Walker got one.
Other party candidates earning votes include Darrell Castle with the Constitution Party, who got 94 votes and Michael Maturen with the American Solidarity Party with 27 votes. Tom Hoefling, the America’s Party candidate received 12 votes.
Others in the political realm receiving votes include Speaker Paul Ryan with 92 votes, 2012 candidate Mitt Romney with 43 votes, 2008 candidate John McCain with 24 votes, and President Obama with 14. His wife Michelle Obama did slightly better, with 15 votes. Colin Powell also received 14 votes, Ron Paul and Condoleeza Rice each got 11, Joe Biden 12, Trey Gowdy, 5, and Ben Sasse had four votes.
Atlanta names receiving votes include former HD 80 candidates Loren Collins with 4 votes, Herman Cain with 3 votes, Neal Boortz and Clark Howard with 2 each, and Tucker Mayor Frank Auman with 2 votes. Governor Nathan Deal also got 2 votes.
Then there were the votes for less likely candidates for president. Jesus Christ led that field with 100 votes, followed by God with 21 votes. Mickey Mouse did slightly better with 23 votes, but Donald Duck only received two votes. Kanye West got 6 votes, narrowly leading Harambe the gorilla, who got five.
Then, you have the voters who would prefer to vent, rather than write in a candidate. Each of these received a single vote: “NO CANDIDATES ARE WORTH MY VOTE! THIS IS THE FIRST ELECTION I FEEL THIS IS A TOTAL SHAM AND I WISH WE HAD MORE RESPECT FOR OUR AMERICAN TRADITIONS!” “I, MICHAEL SARVIS, SEE NO VALUE IN ANY OF THESE PEOPLE’S ABILITY TO LEAD. I VOTE FOR NO ONE.” and of course, “GIVE THIS LAND BACK TO THE NATIVE INDIGENOUS TRIBES, REPARATIONS TO DESCENDANTS OF AFRICANS, DESTROY BABYLON, STOP MILITARY AND PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, STOP RACE/GENDER/SEXUALITY/RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION, END POLICE STATE, PROTECT THE ENVIORNMENT GOD.”
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office says that statewide write in results should be available sometime next week. I suspect that list will only contain the 17 candidates who qualified as official write in candidates with the Secretary of State’s office. One final note: The numbers I post here aren’t official. After converting the PDF of write in votes to Excel, I spent some time trying to fix different spellings of names, and cleaning up glitches from the file conversion. I know I missed some duplicates, but, the numbers should be close enough.