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Animals As Electoral Candidates




There are often obstacles to animals being nominated as candidates — electoral regulations may explicitly require candidates to be human (or equivalent wording), or may require candidates to do things which animals cannot reasonably do (such as sign their name legibly on a legal form). On some occasions, however, animals have been accepted as candidates, and have even won office, although this usually happens only in small towns where the result is not considered important.


EXAMPLES

  • Pigasus The Immortal , a boar hog that the Yippies nominated as a candidate in the U.S. Presidential Election, 1968 .

  • Cacareco, a (in Portuguese, with photos). Today, the term "Voto Cacareco" (Cacareco vote) is commonly used to describe protest votes in Brazil. In 2002, the excenctric candidate Eneas Carneiro, known by shouting and cursing adversaries on TV, was elected for the national chamber of representatives with the largest number of votes in history. the people, tired and disgruntled of the "serious" candidates, gave him 1,5 million "cacareco votes".

  • Cacareco's candidacy inspired the Rhinoceros Party Of Canada , nominally led by Cornelius The First .

  • Tião, a bad-tempered Chimpanzee , was put forward by the anti-establishment Brazilian Banana Party (''Partido Bananista Brasileiro'') as a candidate for the Rio De Janeiro mayoralty in 1988. The campaign's slogan was "Vote monkey - get monkey" (because people were tired of voting for one platform and then seeing the elected officials implementing another one). Tião received over 400,000 votes, coming third.



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