Marshall Roy Schoenke was a write-in presidential candidate last week. He was not on the ballot in any state, but he filed for write-in status in some states. On November 21, the Missouri Secretary of State’s web page erroneously reported that he received 11,503 write-ins. This was an error, which the excellent research done by commenters (see the comments below) explain. It is expected that the Secretary of State will correct the error when the final tabulation is complete.
Schoenke and his running mate, James Creighton Mitchell, Jr., both live in Lake County, Illinois, near Chicago.
Thanks to the commenters, especially Mark Dunlap.
It is easy for me to figure out exactly why that number is that large, and why the number for McMullin is so small. Because the Board of Elections for St. Louis City, St. Louis County, Kansas City, and several county clerks just assigned all write-in votes for anyone to Schoenke. They have not actually read the ballots.
Here is the list of presidential write-in candidates, in the order in which they are listed on the SoS’s website: Marshall Schoenke, Tom Hoefling, Laurence Kotlikoff, Evan McMullin, and Rocky De La Fuente. St. Louis County’s Board of Elections, on election night, reported to SoS that there were 6,271 write-in votes for Schoenke, 0 for Hoefling, 0 for Kotlikoff, 0 for McMullin, and 0 for De La Fuente. St. Louis City’s Board of Elections reported that there were 1,570 write-in votes for Schoenke, 0 for Hoefling, 0 for Kotlikoff, 0 for McMullin, and 0 for De La Fuente. Kansas City’s Board of Elections (for the urban part of Jackson County) reported that there were 1,572 write-in votes for Schoenke, 0 for Hoefling, 0 for Kotlikoff, 0 for McMullin, and 0 for De La Fuente. The County Clerk for Clay County reported there were 1,628 write-in votes for Schoenke, 0 for Hoefling, 0 for Kotlikoff, 0 for McMullin, and 0 for De La Fuente. There appear to be five other smaller counties in which the prelimintary report to the SoS office — election-night reporting — follow the exact same pattern.
Fifty counties did not report any write-in votes, and among those 50 are some of the biggest counties in the state, such as Greene County (Springfield), Jackson County (suburban part), and Jefferson County.
All of these reports were just the preliminary reports — election night reports — which have not been updated since election night. The only thing that makes any logical sense out of those reports for St. Louis City and County, Kansas City, and the other counties is that they merely counted the total number of write-ins, and attributed all write-in votes to the first name on the list (of write-in candidates). Plus those other 50 counties did not bother to report any write-in votes at all, of which I am sure there are thousands that were actually cast by voters.
Just wait until the final report of the “statement of the vote” by all these counties and two cities. The total number of write-in votes will increase by 4,000 or more, and McMullin will have gotten about 3/4s of all the write-ins. And I’ll betcha Schoenke actually got less write-ins than Hoefling, Kotlikoff, or De La Fuente.
Thanks for that research and clarification, Mark. I was baffled by the prospect of a generic conservative with an 80’s style website and difficult to spell or remember name, could do that well in an urban area.
Mark is right. A quick review of the few counties that have already certified their Nov. 8th results show a number of write-in votes for Evan McMullin and a couple for Tom Hoefling and Rocky De La Fuente, but not a single vote cast for the little-known Mr. Schoenke.
Richard should probably delete this thread to avoid any unnecessary embarrassment.
Here’s an additional thought I’ve just had: Among these 11,500 votes, there are probably a lot of write-in votes that will be determined to be invalid because many voters wrote in names of people like Bernie Sanders, Abraham Lincoln, Mickey Mouse, Jesus Christ, etc. I probably let my hopes get too high to assume that Evan McMullin will get 3/4s of all the write-in votes.
Here’s another interesting little factoid: I was born in and lived most of the first forty years of my life in St. Charles County. The current, unofficial report by the “Election Authority” is that there were 119 write-in votes for McMullin, 0 for any of the other four official write-in candidates, and 2,312 other write-ins. Perhaps there’s a lot of St. Charles County voters who did not know to spell “McMullin.”
More news: Kansas City Board of Elections finalized their results as of four days ago, the 18th. Although their report says there were 1622 write-in votes for President, only 330 of them were valid votes for recognized candidates. That leaves 1292 invalid votes! Of the 330 valid votes, 325 were for McMullin, 4 for Kotlikoff, 1 for Hoefling, 0 for Schoenke, and 0 for De La Fuente.
Clay County published their final results the same day. They have a total for the number of write-in votes, but I can’t see a break-down of how many were valid, for whom, or how many were invalid.
St. Louis County published their final results this morning, but there is also no break-down for the write-in votes — that I can see.
This info has not been updated yet on the Missouri SoS site.
what was the final count
geniuses?