Here Are All the Philly Write-In Votes From the November Election

Philly write-in vote getters, clockwise from top left: Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron (photo by Gene Smirnov); late Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo (Temple University archives); Flyers mascot Gritty (AP Photo); Mumia Abu-Jamal (AP Photo); United States President Donald Trump (White House photo); Philadelphia Councilmember Helen Gym (Helen Gym for City Council campaign photo); former President Barack Obama (White House photo); Philadelphia bon vivant and bar owner Fergus “Fergie” Carey (Photo by Howard Pitkow)

Philadelphia’s new voting machines may have some issues (if you haven’t read this alarming New York Times story about what happened in Northampton County on Election Day with the same model Philly has, do so now), but one thing’s for sure: They do make write-in votes a lot easier to cast. And on Election Day in November, there were far more Philly write-in votes than ever before — close to 5,000 of them.

Take, for example, the mayor’s race. In 2015, the last time we voted for mayor in Philadelphia, there were 103 write-in votes. This time around, the write-in votes for mayor totaled 780.

But the real fun is sifting through the write-in votes to see who people were voting for.

Naturally, Gritty received 166 write-in votes, spread across nearly every race, but the 57 write-in votes for Gritty for mayor simply weren’t enough to unseat Jim Kenney.

Other notable names in the write-in race for mayor: Helen Gym, 22; Anthony Williams, 16; Howard Eskin, 11 (sorry, Angelo Cataldi, you only got one vote for mayor); Allan Domb, 8; Frank Rizzo, 4; Inga Saffron, 3; Mumia Abu-Jamal, 3; Fergus “Fergie” Carey, 2; Barack Obama, 1; Harriet Tubman, 1. (Some pols received an additional vote here or there under misspellings or variations on their names.)

Rizzo wasn’t the only former mayor who had his name submitted in various races. John Street was on there, as were Michael Nutter and Ed Rendell. Wilson Goode, however, didn’t get a single write-in vote.

Donald Trump’s name was written in thirteen times across the races — his biggest win was for sheriff (what could possibly go wrong?), where he wound up with five write-in votes. Trump offspring Eric, Donnie Jr., and Ivanka wound up with one vote each for various judgeships. Somehow, Tiffany and Barron didn’t make the cut. Melania was similarly snubbed. Interestingly, not one person wrote in Donald Trump’s name for mayor.

On a more serious or at least more politically wonky note, South Philly resident Jen Devor lost the primary in May in her attempt to become a city commissioner, but she got 228 write-in votes during the general election in November. Similarly, Lauren Vidas, who was defeated by Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson in the primary, picked up 229 write-in votes, the single largest write-in campaign on Election Day.

Oh, and we can’t let a story about write-in votes go by without telling you that there are some fun Simpsons-esque prank names buried in there. Well, unless Hugh Jass (say it aloud) is an actual person. We’ll let you hunt those down on your own.

Below, you will find all of the write-in names from the Philadelphia election in November.

You can use the search box to look for a name or to search only within a particular office. So, if you type “mayor” in the search box, you will only see write-ins for that race. And you can sort the table by clicking on the column headers.

Note that we’ve removed all write-in votes that election officials designated either as blank or void.
The decision to void a vote is made by the City Commissioners office for a variety of reasons, like if a vote is obviously utter nonsense. So what about Gritty? “Well, Gritty is in the public interest,” one of those decision makers told us.