Progress Illinois

On Saturday Night Live's "Thursday Update" yesterday, Lake County's own "Princess the Goldfish" hit the big time when co-host Amy Poehler devoted a joke to the notorious story:

POEHLER:  Election officials in Chicago's northern suburbs are trying to find out why voter registration was sent to Princess Nudelman, a goldfish.  Oh, I don't know -- maybe because she has the world's most awesome goldfish name.

On a related note, after reading our explanation of the incident, a member of the Nudelman family wrote in to our comments section yesterday:

Wow. You're the first blogger that got the facts about Princess exactly right. I'll add one thing - the group that sent us the registration materials - probably Women's Voices, Women's Votes - didn't put their name or address on the mailing. I thought the mailing came from the Lake County Clerk's office. So, when we tried to correct the list, we sent it there. That's how this all started.

Good point.  Below is an updated explanation:

Partially filled-out registrations forms featuring the name of a pet were sent to some Lake County residents.  How did that happen?  In the case of Princess, the Nudelman family of Buffalo Grove used the fish's name when they applied for an additional phone line a while back.  Apparently, "Princess Nudelman" then ended up on one of the subscription lists used by the nonpartisan Voter Participation Center (VPC) to target unregistered female voters nationwide.  When VPC checked the name against the voter file and didn't find a match, they went ahead and sent the partially-completed form to the Nudelmans.  Thinking it had been mailed by the Lake County Clerk (theirs was the only address on the document), the family then sent the form there with a humorous note explaining that the fish was deceased.  In short, Princess was never "registered" nor are there reports of anyone trying to register their pets.