Votes for Mickey Mouse, football coach Nick Saban and “any other Republican” were among more than 22,000 write-ins in the Alabama Senate election the Democrat Doug Jones won this month by a little less than that number.  Senator-elect Doug Jones will use a personal Bible when he is sworn into the Senate later this week. Photograph: Marvin Gentry/X02859 
 
 Controversy surrounding Roy Moore, the first Republican to lose a Senate race in Alabama in 25 years, prompted the high number of write-ins: 22,852 in total, or 1.6% of the 1.3 million who voted. The outgoing Republican senator, Luther Strange, who was appointed to the post vacated by Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions but lost the primary to Moore, was the top write-in candidate in most counties. Photograph: Marvin Gentry/Reuters 
 
 State officials did not tally statewide numbers of write-ins but numbers submitted by counties showed that Strange received more than 7,500 votes, roughly a third of the write-in total. Play Facebook 
 
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 Many of the submission were more serious as some voters followed the lead of Sen. Richard Shelby, who said he could not vote for Moore and was instead writing in the name of another Republican. Related: Alabama makes Jones win official as Moore’s last-ditch challenge fails 
 
 He was followed by retired Marine Col. Lee Busby, former aide to White House chief of staff John Kelly. Other names frequently listed as write-ins were Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Saban, the University of Alabama football coach. Moore was dogged throughout the election by accusations of sexual misconduct with teens several decades ago when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Play Facebook 
 
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 Alabama election officials stressed ahead of the election that voters had to write-in the name of a living person in order for the vote to be tallied. That did not stop votes for Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, SpongeBob SquarePants, Ronald Reagan, Jesus and “UR Mom”. Roy Moore rides his horse, Sassy, to cast his vote at the polling location on Dec. 12, 2017 in Gallant, Alabama. At least one person voted by write-in for Leigh Corfman, one of the women who raised an allegation against Moore, who is 70, about behaviour said to have taken place when he was in his 30s. While Moore repeatedly denied the accusations, he was unable to overcome them in the December vote. Play Video 1:06 Leigh Corfman on her encounter with Roy Moore at age 14 - video 
 
 Other voters voted for another woman, Dianne Bentley, who divorced former Alabama governor Robert Bentley amid accusations that he was having an affair with an aide.
– On Wednesday Vice President Mike Pence will officially welcome Doug Jones into the U.S. Senate, bringing to an end one of the strangest and most controversial elections in recent memory, the Hill reports. And while Jones' former opponent, Roy Moore, is still refusing to concede the race, Alabama state election officials have released information about the more than 22,000 write-in votes that helped to dash his hopes. The man Moore beat in the Republican primary, Luther Strange, got some small revenge, beating all other write-in candidates with 7500 votes, the Guardian reports. Meanwhile, Lee Busby, a former aide to current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly who was running as an independent, won the write-in battle in at least 10 counties. Other fantasy candidates, such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose seat Jones and Moore were vying to fill, and University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban won votes, as did Leigh Corfman, one of the women who accused Moore of trying to instigate an sexual relationship with her when she was just a teenager. And so did Sassy, the horse Moore rode to the polls on Election Day. Some voters vented their frustration with the race by writing in "Neither" and "Any Other Republican," NBC News reports, while others threw their support behind celebrities, both human and animated, like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob Square Pants, Ronald Reagan, and even Jesus. Unfortunately, Alabama election law requires candidates to be living persons in order for write-in ballots to count.