Over 1900 write-in votes casted in Cerro Gordo County general election — see the full list in this story
MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors earlier this week certified the 2020 general election results, which included 1919 different write-ins on the ballot. While some of the names written in are legitimate, a number of those are meant to be humorous.
County Auditor Adam Wedmore says even though it may sound like a good joke, it results in more work for election officials. “It’s a little disappointing in the fact that it does take more resources to actually compile those and tally those, knowing that those are a fictitious vote. It’s kind of a wasted opportunity for a voter to cast their vote. It does take more time and resources, so that can be a little frustrating. If any of those candidates receive at least 5% of the total votes, then we do have to report those as results, otherwise they fall under the scattering category where we just report the overall number.”
Wedmore says people may think nobody is going to know about their write-in vote. “It is maybe something people see as humorous or as a joke or as nobody’s going to see it, nobody’s going to know. We do see it, we do know. That is publicly available information.”
Wedmore says not doing a legitimate write-in could have an impact in certain types of elections. “If you look at some of these statewide elections that we here ‘does my vote really count?’, we’re seeing yes every single vote counts. We’re seeing races being decided by very narrow margins this year, just like we do every election. We still have one race that’s very close in the southeastern part of the state. Those individual votes are essentially not going to go for that candidate that the person really wanted to see.”
While there were over 1900 different write-ins, there were 350 votes cast where the voter filled in a write-in oval but failed to actually write in the candidate’s name. Wedmore isn’t sure why that number is so high. “There was quite a few more of those than I’ve seen in the last couple of elections, whether they chose to not write somebody in or forgot, I guess we’ll never know exactly what led to that. We did see quite a few of those votes for ‘blank’ where they just filled the target in and did not write a name.”
Among those receiving write-in votes for president were Betty White Jerry Springer and Karl Marx.
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