{"id":335,"date":"2012-11-09T19:28:16","date_gmt":"2012-11-10T00:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/charles-darwin-won-16-against-paul-broun-ga-10.html"},"modified":"2012-11-09T19:28:16","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T00:28:16","slug":"charles-darwin-won-16-against-paul-broun-ga-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/charles-darwin-won-16-against-paul-broun-ga-10.html","title":{"rendered":"Charles Darwin won 16% against Paul Broun (GA-10)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nOccupy Athens, which a few weeks ago couldn’t draw more than a few\npeople to its General Assembly, has pulled off some electoral theater\nseen nation-wide:\nwrite-in candidate Charles Darwin drew 16% of the vote against\nevolution-denier Paul Broun in Congressional district 10.\n<\/p>\n

\nNatalie Jennings wrote for the Washington Post 9 November 2012,\n\nCharles Darwin earns nearly 4,000 write-in votes against Ga. Rep. Broun<\/a>,\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n<\/a>\nDarwin, who was the original proponent of the theory of evolution\nand died in 1882, got nearly 4,000 write-in votes against the\nincumbent Broun, according to the\n\nAthens Banner-Herald.<\/a> Broun, a\nphysician, is a creationist who in September said evolution was\nbased on \u201clies straight from the pit of hell.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd here’s part of what one of Occupy Athens wrote online today:\n<\/p>\n\n\n

\n

\nHere’s what one of the movement’s local not-a-leaders had to say\nabout the effort:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n“This is the kind of thing that we do as Occupiers, that nobody ever\nreally notices. Next time around, when the Democrats run someone\nagainst Paul Broun, it will be because they figure that if sixteen\npercent of the voters in Athens-Clarke took the time and trouble to\nwrite in Darwin’s name and another 23,000 or whatever it was skipped\nover Broun completely, then maybe they will have a chance to oust\nBroun from Congress in 2014. This was not just a protest\u2014it\nwas the beginning of a process.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe problem with this account is that the local branch of Occupy\nWall Street isn’t popular in Athens-Clarke County. Their endorsement\nwas not likely to sway many opinions. Their relationship with the\nauthorities isn’t malignant like in Atlanta, but the locals were\npretty hostile last year. I was just relieved nobody quite actually\ngot lynched.\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd yet, 20% of the votes cast in Athens (which translates into 2%\nof the voters in the whole district) were write-ins for Charles\nDarwin. That’s pretty remarkable. Activist professors suggest\nprotest votes over this or that outrage all the time around here.\nWord gets around, and you hear about it, but the results don’t\nusually make the news.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n<\/a>\n
\n\n(Photo\/Damien Salas, dfs2423@uga.edu, dfrancsalas.com)\n<\/small>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nSo does one solitary anarchist cos-playing Charles Darwin in front\nof the UGA Arches make a difference? Probably yes. Probably more\nthan a hundred angry demonstrators getting kettled by police. So far\nthe strength of the Occupy movement has not been its numbers, but\nits ability to expose and undermine the spectacle of society with\nspectacles of its own.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe story has been covered from Australia to Russia,\nand the wapo version is #9 on reddit as I type, which means millions of\npageviews.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Occupy Athens, which a few weeks ago couldn’t draw more than a few people to its General Assembly, has pulled off some electoral theater seen nation-wide: write-in candidate Charles Darwin drew 16% of the vote against evolution-denier Paul Broun in Congressional district 10. Natalie Jennings wrote for the Washington Post 9 November 2012, Charles Darwin […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,15,49,266,8,2,19,733,22],"tags":[8736,1355,1358,1356,8717,8705,8721,1359,8756,8701,8699,8709,8799,1357,1360,8712,1361],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-education","category-elections","category-festivals","category-georgia","category-government","category-history","category-media","category-politics","tag-activism","tag-athens","tag-charles-darwin","tag-clark-county","tag-community","tag-education","tag-elections","tag-evolution","tag-festivals","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-history","tag-media","tag-occupy-athens","tag-paul-broun","tag-politics","tag-theater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-5p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}