Bugs Bunny one of New Jersey voters’ favorite write-in candidates

With all of the election talk and the nail-biter that is the New Jersey gubernatorial race, I thought it would be interesting to expose the lighter side of what happens in the election booth.

There is so much focus placed on the problems with the new voting machines that we never got a chance to even take a look at some of the write-in candidates. Write-ins from Tuesday’s election, of course, are not yet available to the public.

So I thought it would be interesting to take a peek into who people in New Jersey like to write in for governor — Or for any elected office, for that matter.

I picked a county out of a hat: Salem County.

I checked on SalemCountyClerk.org to see just what was up in the 2021 Democratic primary back in June. I’m not sure if every county does this but they published all of the write-in votes on their website.

They actually had to post a disclaimer apologizing for any expletives they were not able to redact. They explained that there was just too much foul language to be able to find every bad word that was written in. But we can only imagine.

Interestingly, Bugs Bunny is one of the favorite candidates for office in New Jersey. So is Donald Duck. So is “anyone but Phil.”

Sometimes it looks like people were trying to say something else but just couldn’t figure out how to spell it.

For state Senate in the Democratic primary, we had a vote for Bruce Springsteen and although, as far as I know, Bedrock is not a city in New Jersey, there was actually a write-in for Fred Flintstone nonetheless.

It was actually fun to read. Donald Trump was written in for everything possible. My favorite write-in votes were the ones along the lines of, “anyone but Steve Sweeney.” And who the hell is Levin? Michael Levin? Your guess is as good as mine.

Here are some of my favorite write-in candidates.

Governor primary democrats:
Bugs Bunny
D trump
Levin
Kim Guadruno
A republican
Donald Duck
Anyone but the current
Anyone but Phil
Anyone else

Stare senate democrats:
Anyone else
Someone who is not a crook
Levin
Donald Duck
Not him
Mickey Mouse
anyone
a republican
John Doe
Fred Flintstone
anyone but him
Nope

State senate republicans:
Bob
No 1/6/21 Commission fail

Assembly democrats:
Salem County Resident
Donald Duck
Casper the Ghost
Levin

Assembly republicans:
No 1/6/21 commission fail
DDD
Bob
Sam
None
John Doe
Donald Trump
Trump
PPPPPRRRRSSS
Scooby
No choice
Donald J. Trump
Spike
Mickey Mouse
Anybody but the current
Nebody but decurrent
Me
ABC
Pro Life
IDK