Big winner in MnDOT's snowplow contest: Plowy McPlowFace

F. Salt Fitzgerald, Darth Blader and Snowbi Wan Kenobi will plow ahead. Sir Plows a Lot, Edward Blizzardhands and Luke Snowalker were all left out in the — you know where.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation announced Tuesday the eight winners of its Name a Snowplow contest. The top vote-getter by far was, of course, Plowy McPlowFace, with more than 65,000 votes. Ope, Just Gonna Plow Right Past Ya and Duck Duck Orange Truck were in a distant second and third place, with about 29,000 and 28,000 respectively.

In December, the department asked the public to submit "creative, witty, punny and fun ideas for snowplow names," and it received about 23,000 entries, the Minnesota Reformer, an independent news website, reported. Officials whittled that list down to 50 finalists, and by the end of voting last week, more than 122,000 people had voted, the department said. (Voters were allowed to select up to eight entries.)

In addition to the top three vote-getters, other winners included Plow Bunyan, Snowbi Wan Kenobi and the Truck Formerly Known as Plow — an homage to singer and Minnesota native Prince.

Sir Plows a Lot narrowly missed the cutoff, coming in ninth place with 16,212 votes — 1,337 votes behind the Prince homage entry.

The winning names will appear on the back or sides of eight snowplows, with one assigned to each of the state's eight regional transportation districts, officials said.

Some other "Star Wars"-themed entries fell short. C-3PSnow received more than 13,000 votes; Luke Snowalker got a little more than 8,000.

This being 2021, the lighthearted contest was not without some controversy. Transportation officials removed one of the most popular entries submitted by the public: Abolish Ice, a play on the rallying cry of critics of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the Reformer determined. That name had ranked No. 2 among all the entries, it reported.

"There's certainly a time and place for political expression," Jake Loesch, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, told the New York Times last month. "A snowplow naming contest might not be the appropriate place for that."