Friday, January 21, 2011

Running for president

About two years ago, I announced I was running for president. (see here) While I didn't garner quite enough votes to beat out then-Senator Obama, I did managed to spend a few blog posts detailing my ideas of what the next president should do.

It turns out, I may have started too late. I found this article today that says 76 people have already registered to run in 2012. Maybe I should throw my name into the hat once again?

From the article, it looks getting my name on the ballot in my home state. SC requires candidates to get signatures from 10,000 register voters. I know my mom will sign, that's only 9,999 more to go (I might be able to count on my wife, depends on if I took out the garbage last night - which I don't remember). It might be easier to start on the ballot in New Hampshire, where all you have to do is pay a $1,000 fee and fill out a form.

I'm already behind in my fund raising, one of my soon-to-be competitors, Randy Knill (gotta love that first name), from my neighboring state has already raised $349. That's about $348 more than I raised in my last election attempt. And the competition will be fierce, one of the candidates is Rutherford B. Hayes. My first thought was that he won the presidency before and he would be a little old by the time he was elected (he was 188 on his last birthday). But it turns out this Hayes is younger and no relationship to President #19. (This Hayes is only 42)

As a side note, I found out that the election of the first Rutherford B. Hayes was very close, a difference of 19 electoral votes. Additionally, 20 of the electoral votes were in question and could have changed the election all together. According to this article, Hayes was awarded the presidency in return for ending Reconstruction. South Carolina and Florida played a crucial role. I guess there were hanging chads in the election of 1876.

5 comments:

LL said...

Alvin Green won the nod of the Democratic Party. That should give you courage to soldier on... you're not under indictment for being a pervert and that might weigh in against you -- but it doesn't mean that you can't learn.

Randy said...

LL, Good point about Green. He was(is) from my very own state. And he received a LOT of votes. I'm probably at least 1 or 2 IQ points above him, so I've probably got a good shot.

Thanks for your comments.

Anonymous said...

I could probably get you a few signatures!

Brian the Red said...

Your last name is already very presidential sounding, but, you may need to stop using the shortened version of your first name because of its negative conotations.

Randy said...

You're right Brian. I had a British friend who explained "Randy" to me several years ago (not many Americans understand that).

I'll probably go with my formal name "Randall". It's on my SC Birth Certificate....