The handwriting on the form was perfect, the sort of beautiful penmanship I’d always wished I’d had and that you always see on love letters or old documents from another era. On the form: Election returns. Hand-written.

In Kansas’ Anderson County, in Walker Township, the elegant lettering noted, voters had cast more than one hundred ballots for the Republican. Eighty-seven had voted for the independent candidate. A handful had voted for the Libertarian, and six — or was it just a very ornate zero? — voted for a write-in candidate.