The write-in votes are still being counted with the end nowhere in sight. By the middle of Friday afternoon, Clifford Township had been completed. This would make 5 of the 43 precincts in Susquehanna County. Actually, there are 40 townships and boroughs, however Forest City, Susquehanna and Montrose Boroughs all have 2 precincts, thus there are 43. Each of these 43 has write-in votes which have to be counted by hand, with each separate spelling of every vote has to have it’s own count. Thus, every one who voted for Mickey Mouse gets a separate entry from every one who may have voted for Michael Mouse, Micky Mouse, Micky Maus and so on. Add to this the votes for “None of the Above” and the spelling variations of that, “Any One Else” and any number of other wasted votes; in addition to the write-in candidates and the various spellings of their names and you have a lot of time invested.
While one can appreciate the level of frustration being experienced with various politicians, voting for “Donald Duck” is not going to solve the problem. Further, if one is a legitimate write-in candidate for an office, why not invest a couple of bucks and have preprinted stickers with their correctly spelled name and hand them out to prospective voters. Of course this could also create problems if the stickers come off in the optical scanning process. Stories of jammed scanners and lost votes have been told in other parts of the country.
The moral here is to buy quality stickers and hand them out to voters (if they want them), a reasonable distance from the polling place. What’s a reasonable distance? Good judgment should determine that. Being right in the voter’s face 10 feet from the door, in the middle of a forest of political signs, although legal, is really showing signs of desperation and could well offend the very voter the candidate is trying to reach.
Finally, those candidates who have write-in votes which have been misspelled will have to go to court to attempt to get them added into their count if they are rejected.
Add the number of write-in candidates and the misspellings to the number of offices being sought (it’s not just about the commissioner race as virtually every office has some write in votes) and the “My Dog could do better” votes.
Sorting out this mess is a thankless job which takes time and more patience than most of have.
The results will be here eventually. No voting system is equipped to handle a large numbers of write-in votes. Although everyone who is entitled to vote may vote for whom they choose, discretion, maturity and common sense should prevail.