Mark Levin has a great sense of humor – he’s saying that the President can just adjust the interpretation of the 14th Amendment and it passes Constitutional muster, after all. It’s easy to see how the man who would say ““He’s not changing the Constitution by executive order. He’s not reinterpreting the Constitution by executive order. He’s getting the executive branch under control and saying, ‘This is what the 14th Amendment means.’” might pull a trick on his other Fox brethren… and anyone else too thick to recognize that stating what something means is the same as interpreting it.
So, I’m imagining that the playful jester of Fox might sneak a few stories into the story editors’ pile for election day, to see if they’d notice.
Here are ten stories of odd elections trivia. Three are false, or, as Levin likes to call them, “Trump true.” See if you can figure out which three are worthy only of reporting by the masters of talk radio!
- Austin, TX prides itself on being weird. That includes District 3 of their city council, where the frontrunner for the seat, Susana Almanza, was knocked off by an unlikely latecomer to the race… Pio Almanza, her brother. Susana was stunned by her brother’s filing, stunned more by the upset loss, and is looking to stun her brother in the upcoming election, where she is fighting to unseat him. – TRUE
- Omena, MI has a mayor named, of all things, “Sweet Tart”. She has a decent resume, despite the odd name: she served on the city council for three years and was Vice Mayor for another three. Oh, and she’s a cat, so perhaps the name isn’t quite so odd. – TRUE (See the links from PoliticalWaif in the comments… there’s even a picture of the cute kitty.
- Patsy Mink, decades-long Hawaii Representative, was elected in 2002 by a wide margin… even though she had died in September. When they held a special election to replace her, Ed Case won… but Patsy Mink still came in second, almost beating him. – FALSE. The Hawaiians might have loved Patsy Mink, but not enough to vote for her to stay in office when dead.
- Rocker John Mellencamp reminded everyone at a November 2, 2016 concert to vote Democrat, because of the importance of the election. He was in Montreal, Canada at the time. – FALSE. He’s been a firm Democrat for years, but he’s rational enough to remember the country in which he’s playing.
- Utah isn’t normally considered the home of innovation. They were among the first to allow women to vote, however, passing a law in 1870 which recognized that basic right… until the U.S. Congress, with the Edmunds-Tucker Act, stripped them of that right amidst an array of other anti-Mormon provisions. – TRUE. Check out Section 20, which was nothing less and nothing more than a federal move against states granting suffrage.
- Gerald Hege of North Carolina is a former sheriff, running for that office again. The state Supreme Court had to clear it, though; he’s also a convicted felon, and in 2010 the state passed an Amendment barring felons from running for sheriff. He had previously been convicted of corruption and abuse-of-office felonies from his time as Sheriff. – TRUE. He was judged able to run by the state Supreme Court because other legislation the state Congress passed causes non-violent felonies to be cleared from records after a length of time, and though he’d been convicted of corruption-related felonies, they’re no longer officially on his record.
- In 2017, also in North Carolina, the mayoral elections for two towns, Lumber Bridge and Orrum, had no candidates. Luckily for them, the people elected on write-in ballots complied with the will of the people and accepted their new positions. – TRUE
- The majority of Presidential votes in Jackson, NH in 2016 didn’t go to either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Libertarian Gary Johnson won the town of roughly 1000 people. – FALSE. Johnson did very well in New Hampshire, in places capturing a double-digit percentage of the vote, but he didn’t win any towns. Hillary Clinton won Jackson, decisively.
- The District One seat on Cook County, Minnesota’s County Board was determined in 2014 by pulling Scrabble tiles from a bag. The winner was the first person to select the “Z”. – TRUE
- A Waterville, Maine couple enjoys their politics enough to run for office… against each other. Jennifer Johnson ran in 2013 as a Democrat for Warden of her county, a position involving local election oversight. She lost to her husband, David Johnson, a Republican. – FALSE. Not intentionally, though; I was finishing up on the way out the door to Crayola with the kiddo and wrote the final bit wrong; she won the race.
For a challenge, pick the ones you think are false and post the numbers in the comments WITHOUT using a search engine to check your answers. The three fakes will be posted early tonight, with an update to the thread. And feel free to keep the thread semi-open… this is for anything funny or politically odd. Anyone wanting to submit their own “true or false?” options is encouraged to do so.
Or just go full Trumpy and insist that all ten are true, despite being told they aren’t. You’ll be able to get dozens of politicians and prominent talk show hosts to back you up.
UPDATE: Full answers up top. And, yes, I screwed up… which somehow seems appropriate for something like this, however unintentional it might have been. Now I have another question, though; should I do something like this again? I enjoyed it, so I’d like to know if others did, too.
