Colbert does it again

There was a controversy that made the national news in the Alaska Senate race when people misspelled Lisa Murkowski’s name on a write-in campaign.  The republicans wanted any misspelled ballots to be tossed.  Democrats wanted them all counted.  The judge decided that if it was close enough to be obviously a write in for her, then it would be counted, but if it was uncertain, it shouldn’t be counted.

So Steve Colbert, in his brilliance, has thrown a real wrinkle in the Iowa strawpoll.  Rick Perry is planning to announce he is running for President on the day of the poll.  So his name is not on the ballot and lot of people plan to write his name in.  After the Murkowski precedent, if someone writes in Rick Parry, that would be seen as close enough since no other candidates' names are even close.  So Colbert’s superPAC has put out commercials to vote for Rick Parry as a protest vote.  Now, if someone writes in Rick Parry, there will be no way to know if they are responding to Colbert or if they really just misspelled Perry (which is apparently very common). Here is his commercial on YouTube. 

Now what would happen if Colbert did this (which he still could) in a real election?  He could really throw the result into doubt, like in the Murkowski case. This could actually undermine the whole idea of a write-in vote.  Any rich superPAC could run commercials promoting a misspelling of someone running a write-in campaign and screw it up if that person even comes close to winning.  That probably wouldn’t happen in a Presidential campaign, but we saw it with Alaska Senator.  And one more person in the Senate could switch the majority from one party to the other.