Local elections are supposed to be free from skullduggery, right? Well, not so in Chapel Hill. All sorts of fake candidates are putting out fraudulent signs in a dastardly attempt to confuse voters. A biscuit shop as your next senator might not be as far off as you think.
I’ve seen at least five candidates who don’t appear on the ballot and yet have scattered their signs around Chapel Hill. They all are clearly running for office—why else would they put out a colorful plastic sign bedecked with campaign slogans like “Believe” and “Your Property is Our Priority” ? And, given the fact that voters just write down words they see on signs when filling out their ballot, any of these could potentially sneak into the halls of government.
However, some of these candidates probably don’t have the signage presence to win. Alpaca (which appears to be a chicken) and the lawn care business with a large sign at the Weaver Dairy roundabout could only function as spoiler candidates. But I have seen more signs for RISE than I have for all Republican candidates combined. Particularly worrying is the candidacy of Easter, the Christian holiday, which has a high name recognition and quite a few signs.
The $64,000 question in this whole thing is what these candidates reasonably think their endgame is. Are they going to pop up on ballots out of nowhere? Will they sneak into the election offices thanks to their bribes of biscuits and donuts? If they don’t win, will they all form a front and use the power of lawn mowers and the Easter Bunny to stage a coup?
There is a smaller question that I can take a gander at: What are they running for? Probably Senate, since no other Senate candidates seem to have garlanded our town with their names in blocky letters. Yard Sale, however, seems to be running for a local office, given that they provided their address.
Luckily, there are some simple steps that we all can take to prevent these fake candidates from winning office. Firstly, fill out your ballot correctly.
Secondly, many of them might be ineligible. Some people seriously thought Madison Cawthorn could be disqualified, and he’s at least supposedly a person. Our candidates include, last I checked, a lost cat, a holiday, and a chicken-alpaca hybrid. The biscuit shop is a corporation, which is obviously a person, so unfortunately it’s probably eligible. Most of them probably aren’t even old enough to serve. Even though Easter is probably as old as the average senator nowadays, it’s definitely violating separation of church and state. If worst comes to worst, haven’t we all violated the Fourteenth Amendment at some point? Try to pin that on them.
This is a trying time: your fellow voters like Easter, biscuits, and Peruvian chicken. Graig Meyer, supposedly an actual candidate, is a silhouette of North Carolina, according to his sign. Combine all this, and anybody could become confused and accidentally vote Easter for Register of Deeds. Imagine the chaos that will cause: Civil War records might be inaccurate!
Photos by Benjamin McAvoy-Bickford/The ECHO
