It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region, and investigate, report, explore, from WBEZ.

I'm Curious City reporter Monica Ang, and I recently talked to question-asker Emma O'Day, who told me about something that happened last year around election time.

Her pal just got back from voting, and he told her when he steps into the booth,

instead of voting for anyone listed on the ballot, he wrote in his own candidate that was Bill Murray.

You know, from Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Caddyshack.

And it made me wonder how often he in particular showed up as a right-in candidate, but really also what else are people writing in?

Well, normally, it would be impossible to answer a question about what names people write-in. And here's why.

The judges of election are only supposed to keep records of the write-ins for people

who have actually filed declarations of intent to be writing candidates for that office.

That's Board of Election spokesman Jim Allen.

So if someone writes in something silly like Mickey Mouse or Bozo the Clown, we don't tally those up.

Yeah, the law just doesn't require him to

keep the records, because election judges thought counting votes for Mickey Mouse and Bozo seemed like a

waste of time and money. But get this. Alan told me about this freak election last year. It was for the

Water Reclamation District. See, a commissioner there died three months

before the election. And since there wasn't enough time to go through the normal process,

they had to hold an all-write-in election for the seat. So nobody was on the actual ballot. Every

vote had to be written in. And in those cases, officials do have to keep a record of every single thing people write in.

I don't think that's ever happened before.

Probably will never happen again.

Lucky for you, we got our hands on those records.

And they offer a rare peek into the kind of shenanigans,

...