Joe Exotic, God and all NJ’s write-in votes (Opinion)

Nothing like four years ago, but there were still thousands of New Jersey voters who didn’t like any of the choices for president in 2020. In 2016 more than 29,000 did a write-in vote. That’s because Hillary Clinton had the second highest unfavorable rating of anyone who ran for that office in modern times. The person with the highest unfavorable rating was Donald Trump himself.

With feelings like that you’re going to have a lot of write-ins. This year the Trump/Biden matchup wasn’t as bad. More than 13,000 in the Garden State wrote someone in.

According to northjersey.com, New Jersey is one of only eight states to allow voters to write in anyone (or anything) they choose. Most states won’t count write-in votes unless a candidate filed in advance, and other states don’t allow any write-in option. So naturally New Jersey is one of a handful of states that record some pretty far-out and funny write-ins.

A few that jump out from 13 counties that shared their write-in results:

The traditional Mickey Mouse protest vote got 74.

Kanye West failed miserably in his insane bid to launch a campaign yet got nearly 600 write-ins.

Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen had 3.

Gov. Phil Murphy received 14.

Joe Gatto from Impractical Jokers even got 1 vote.

God drew 24 write-in votes.

Ur mom got 1 vote in Burlington County.

So did dead comedian Richard Pryor.

MY C*** got one vote in Somerset County. Hmmm. I don’t approve this message.

Singer Jax from American Idol fame took one vote in Somerset County.

Someone in Union County felt their cat could do a better job and wrote that in.

Adorbs muppet Elmo got one vote each in Camden, Somerset and Union Counties.

Go here to read more from northjersey.com.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski. Any opinions expressed are Jeff Deminski's own.