It's often hard to be an American....occasionally explaining to some German or sorts....on how we had an election in some town, and the dead candidate won. It's even harder....to explain how dozens, perhaps hundreds, and maybe even thousands of dead folks vote in regular elections.
This week....based on news reports....there's at least two candidates for small-time offices who won, yet they are dead (passed-on, as we say in Bama).
Yeah, the voters knew it. This had been printed up in the regional newspapers, and if you read them.....you'd know that "Joe" was dead. The general problem is that no one in either party wants to invent some rule where the political party steps in and selects a last-minute replacement....who immediately loses the race.
Naturally, there are rules where the dead guy can't occupy the office....so the county commission, the mayor, the governor....etc....picks some temporary replacement, and they run up another election in less than twelve months.
Dead-guy politics are difficult to figure out. If there's a week left in the election....it's hard for any newspaper to come up and criticize a dead guy, his record, or his personal habits (boozing it up, gambling in Vegas, trailer-trashy women, missing neighbors, bar fights, corruption, real estate deals with fake companies, etc).
Once you are passed-on as a political candidate....it's pretty clear sailing. Even your opponent can't say much against you.
Politics usually involves flip-flopping around....course, for a dead guy running for office, there's no more flip-flopping. Positions are iron-tight at this point.
You'd think a third-party candidate would suddenly get a bunch of votes, and things might get more interesting, but that never happens.
So onward goes an American tradition. Dead-guys can win an election. Dead voters can determine close elections. And it's all part of being a Republic....sadly.
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