Louisville Clerk Counts 23,000 Write-Ins

Election workers in Louisville are manually sorting through handwritten ballots as the county races against a strict certification timeline.

Jefferson County Clerk David Yates reported that his office has identified more than 23,000 write-in votes across all local races. Only three candidates filed the required registration paperwork to appear as approved write-in options, including mayoral candidate Jeff Yocum.

Yates explained that candidates must list multiple spelling variations on their registration forms to account for voter typos. One worker sits beside the clerk, checking each entry in real time against a pre-approved list of name variations.

"They have to look and see if it’s any variation of that name," Yates said. "If they see anything that even looks like it, then they’ll look at that name and they’ll see if it’s one of the nine variations they put in place. If it is, it gets counted. If it’s not, then they have to move forward."

Kentucky law requires two election workers to verify the validity of each individual write-in vote. This manual process continues in most Jefferson County races where clear winners have already emerged.

The county must certify all results and send them to the Secretary of State’s Office by Tuesday, Nov. 10.