It happens every election.<\/p>\n
Thousands of mail-in ballots are delivered to the Travis County Clerk\u2019s Office. The votes are counted and the results are slowly tallied.<\/p>\n
Many votes are for legitimate candidates, while others are for Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse or \u201cnone of these motherf\u2014\u2014\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the clerk\u2019s office, every vote is taken seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just doesn’t get dumped in a bin and we forget about it,\u201d Travis County Clerk Dyana Limon-Mercado said. \u201cA human \u2014 actually two humans \u2014 one from the Democratic Party, one from the Republican Party, will actually look at that image of your ballot and decipher what was the voter\u2019s intent.\u201d<\/p>\n
If someone writes in “Mickey Mouse” and no real candidate is selected, it\u2019s considered an \u201cundervote,” which means no vote is cast for that race. But it\u2019s not always so easy.<\/p>\n
If a voter selects a real candidate and writes in a fictional candidate, a representative from both political parties have to agree on what the voter\u2019s intent was.<\/p>\n
Limon-Mercado said these kinds of ballots are the most frequent issue that comes up for the clerk\u2019s office during elections, and they severely slow the process of counting early voting ballots.<\/p>\n
Limon-Mercado said, during local elections, it takes around six hours to count ballots cast during early voting. But elections with state and national races take longer. In 2024, Travis County election workers spent three days counting early voting ballots for the presidential election because of the volume of write-ins, she said.<\/p>\n
This year, the impact of write-ins like Mickey Mouse will be worse for election staff.<\/p>\n
At the request of the Travis County Republican Party, early voting ballots will now be counted on Election Day instead of the Saturday between the end of early voting and Election Day. Limon-Mercado said she still hopes the first round of results will be released at about 7 p.m. on Tuesday, but the change could cause delays.<\/p>\n