Louisville voters cast 23,000 write-in votes, including Mickey Mouse and "Opal the Dog"

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (Nov. 9) — Election results in Jefferson County are final after clerk's office staff worked through roughly 23,000 write-in votes cast across every race on last week's ballot, WHAS11 reported. The Kentucky State Board of Elections is scheduled to certify the results Tuesday.

About 11,000 of those write-ins came in the Louisville mayor's race, which Mayor Craig Greenberg won with more than 130,000 votes to Shameka Parrish-Wright's nearly 97,000, according to WLKY. State law requires the clerk's office to look at every write-in by hand.

Most of the mayoral write-ins, about 8,000, went to Jeff Yocum, one of three people who formally filed as write-in candidates, County Clerk David Yates told the station. Dave Biggers and JusAustin Lane were the other two.

The rest were all over the map. Names on the list Yates shared included Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, "Opal the Dog," Jesus Christ, "Neither," "Anybody Else" and Yates himself, along with a handful of local politicians who weren't running for mayor, WLKY reported.

Yates said voters have every right to cast a protest vote, but he wants people to know it isn't free. "When you write in a candidate that's not a registered candidate; it also is a cost to your community and the time and energy in here," he told WHAS11.

The clerk's office said the election otherwise went smoothly, including the county's first year of drive-thru voting.