Politex has a story about the presidential write-ins in November in Tarrant and Travis Counties, the only two truly populous Texas counties that count all the presidential write-ins, not just the write-ins for the declared presidential candidates. Ron Paul easily got the most write-ins. Thanks to Gene Berkman for the link.
Again – IF no Electors list filed for a candidate, then such candidate votes are 100 percent meaningless – votes for Mickey Mouse, etc.
jesus christ got 80 votes in texas and 2 in alabama.
This has a list of all presidential write-ins for non-candidates in Tarrant County (Fort Worth).
http://startelegram.typepad.com/politex/uncertified-writein-votes.html
It does include a vote for “Barnett”, even though Andre Barnett was a declared write-in candidate in Texas. Since Barnett is credited with 11 votes from Tarrant County, it appears that the Startlegram may have scrubbed the list.
Most counties in Texas use DRE for voting. If there are declared write-in candidates for an office, you select “Write-in” and then are presented a screen with the alphabet. You select a letter at a time to spell a name – it is actually quite tedious. So most write-ins are automatically digitized (about 5% of Tarrant County votes were paper mail ballots, which presumably require some hand transcription of write-ins).
In previous elections, the SOS has ruled that the vote counting machines could not be pre-programmed to accept alternative spellings, but once a spelling was accepted, other ballots with the same spelling could be automatically counted. For example, if “Good” was considered close enough for “Goode”, then there was no need to make a determination on other ballots with the same spelling.
In Texas, write-in candidates must file by early September, and they are listed in each voting booth (and in the materials sent to by-mail voters), so they are more formally candidates than they are in other States. Election officials necessarily must examine write-in votes, and make an affirmative determination that they are not one of the certified candidates.
The original article,
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/02/voting-mickey-mouse/
does not indicate that Tarrant and Travis counties actually counted the write-ins for non-candidates, but merely that they could produce a list of such votes.