Willie Nelson for soil and water conservation? A review of this year’s write-in votes.

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Would Willie Nelson make a good soil and water conservation district supervisor? Two Wake County residents voting in this month’s election seemed to think so.

Opinions among other voters were divided. Some opted for rappers Tyler, the Creator and Tupac. Four people backed Elon Musk, whose appetite for taking on new projects probably wouldn’t deter him from adding the duties of a soil and water conservation official to his plate.

Some voters seemed to believe the next supervisors should bring presidential experience to the job. Five people voted for Barack Obama, while 23 people voted for Donald Trump. Joe Biden also got three votes.

Of course, winning one of the two open seats on the five-person board of supervisors required having many more votes in your corner. Jenna Wadsworth, the current vice-chair of the board who has been serving since 2010, cruised to another term with 200,088 votes, according to unofficial results from the State Board of Elections.

Beth Pugh Farrell, an agricultural programs specialist at the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, won the other seat with 146,245 votes.

Members of the board, three of them elected in nonpartisan races and two appointed by the N.C. Soil and Water Conservation Commission, meet every month to “establish local soil and water conservation priorities based on the needs of the district,” according to the Wake County website.

The board accomplishes its work “by partnering with local, state and federal agencies; businesses; and non-profit organizations for technical and financial assistance,” the website states.

More than 99% of ballots cast in the soil and water board race were for one of five candidates who appeared on the ballot. But that didn’t stop 4,244 people who came across the question from writing in a candidate of their choice.

The Wake County Board of Elections tallied all of the write-in votes, as elections officials do for every race where the option to write someone in is available, and released a 103-page spreadsheet listing all of the responses voters wrote down across a number of races, including U.S. Senate, Raleigh mayor, and Raleigh city council.

Write-in votes might be the ultimate illustration of democracy at work. If you don’t like the candidates presented to you on the ballot, or don’t know much about a local governing body like the soil and water conservation district board of supervisors, you can vote for whomever you’d like.

Some people write the names of their friends, or vote for themselves. Some simply write “Me.” Many vote for celebrities or other known people. And some just write “Cinnamon Toast.”

Others use the blank space as an opportunity to offer their thoughts on the importance of the office they’re voting on.

Scroll down to the “N” section of responses and you’ll see some direct feedback, including: “No Answer,” “No Confidence,” “No Nerds,” “No One,” “No Thanks,” “Not Fair To Us,” and “Not Needed.”

OTHER STORIES FROM THE TEAM THIS WEEK

▪ Local elections boards certified two pending N.C. House races that had yet to be called last week. The victories for Democrat Diamond Staton-Williams in House District 73 in Cabarrus County, and Republican Timothy Reeder in House District 9 in Pitt County, confirmed that Republicans will fall one seat short of a supermajority in the House, Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi reported.

▪ President Joe Biden pardoned two Thanksgiving turkeys, natives of North Carolina who he named Chocolate and Chip, at the White House South Lawn on Monday morning, Danielle Battaglia reported. The turkeys returned to Raleigh, where they’ll live out their lives at N.C. State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Colleen Hammond reported.

▪ At a city council meeting Tuesday, Durham Mayor Elaine O’Neal said that as families celebrate Thanksgiving this week, the victims of gun violence in her city should not be forgotten, Mary Helen Moore reported. Thirty-five people were fatally shot in Durham as of Nov. 5. Two more young men, both of them Black, were killed in shootings this past week.

Thanks for reading. See you next week. In the meantime, tune into our stories, our tweets and our Under the Dome podcast for more developments.

— By Avi Bajpai, reporter for The News & Observer. Email me at abajpai@newsobserver.com.