Elections are mainly restricted to living persons. Before running for office, various prerequisites must often be met, such as minimum age or residence in the area to be governed. It goes without saying that you should have a pulse. But none of that has stopped dead individuals from defeating living opponents, often by wide margins, to win seats they will never occupy. Voters were usually aware that the candidate they were voting for was no longer alive, yet they went out to vote nevertheless. The deceased winners died before their elections in all cases, although their names remained on the ballots for legal reasons. We present you with 5 times dead people who won elections in the US.
5 times dead people won elections in US
1- Gary Ernst
Gary Ernst, who died in 2016, was elected treasurer of Oceanside, California. Voters and city council members were aware of Ernst’s death but voted for him anyhow because they did not want his challenger, Nadine Scott, to win the position. Jerry Kern, a councilor, famously advised supporters to vote for the deceased Ernst so that Kern could choose someone else to fill the job. After Ernst died, Nadine Scott informed prospective voters that Ernst was no longer alive and asked them to vote for her instead because she was the only candidate left. She was defeated in the election despite receiving 15,500 votes. Ernst received 17,659. Despite losing the election, Scott asked the city council to appoint her as treasurer.
2- Hale Boggs and Nick Begich
A Cessna 310 plane went missing while flying from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on October 16, 1972. Five men were on board, including Democrats Hale Boggs (left) and Nick Begich (right). Boggs and Begich were both members of the United States House of Representatives at the time; Boggs was the House majority leader, while Begich represented Alaska. Both were up for re-election. In reality, they were flying for a campaign when their jet went missing. In response, Congress demanded that all airplanes operating in the US be fitted with emergency locator transmitters.
A huge search was undertaken to locate the missing airliner. For 39 days, 90 civilian and military aircraft flew over 842,000 square kilometers (325,000 mi2) of land for a total of more than 3,600 hours. At the time, it was the greatest search and rescue operation in US history. The plane was never discovered. In response, Congress mandated that all planes flying in the United States be outfitted with emergency locating transmitters. Boggs’ death sparked a slew of conspiracy theories. He was a member of the Warren Commission, which was tasked with investigating the killing of John F. Kennedy. Boggs never agreed with the commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone. He was adamant that at least one other individual had fired a shot at Kennedy.
Boggs and Begich were reelected despite being dead. Boggs’s wife, Lindy, won a special election to replace him and won further elections until 1991. Don Young, a Republican and Begich’s competitor during the election, won the special election to replace Begich and every subsequent election until 2008.
3- Mel Carnahan
Even though he died three weeks earlier, Missouri governor Mel Carnahan was elected as one of the state’s two senators in Congress in 2000. Mel Carnahan, the late senator, defeated incumbent John Ashcroft with 1,075,872 votes (50 percent) to Ashcroft’s 1,039,409 votes (49 percent). Despite having worked together for several years, both candidates were embroiled in a bitter rivalry for the seat. When Ashcroft was governor of Missouri, Carnahan was the lieutenant governor. Carnahan was appointed governor after Ashcroft finished his tenure and moved to the Senate.
Carnahan decided to run for senator after finishing his second term as governor. He was killed in a plane crash with his son and an aide just three weeks before the election, therefore he never made it to the Senate. Because the election was so close, his name could not be removed from the ballot. Carnahan’s party spent $700,000 on advertising showing his late wife, Jean, urging voters to support her late husband. Roger Wilson, Missouri’s lieutenant governor, who was appointed to the governor after Carnahan’s death, told Jean that he would choose her to fill her husband’s seat in the US Senate.
4- Carl Robin Geary
Carl Robin Geary was elected mayor of Tracy City, Tennessee, in 2010. But he was never elected mayor since he died of a heart attack just before the election. Voters were aware that Geary had died, but they voted for him anyhow because they did not want his opponent and incumbent mayor, Barbara Brock, to remain in office. Barbara received only 85 votes, whereas Geary received 268. Voters were so fed up with Brock that one man said he would vote for the deceased Geary if he campaigned for reelection. Mrs. Brock now had a very distinct political profile as a result of her defeat. She was elected mayor in 2008 when the former mayor died while in office. The position was then taken by another deceased guy.
5- Roger Freeman
Roger Freeman died just six days before the election in 2014 while campaigning for a seat in the Washington state legislature. He had completed his first term and was preparing to begin his second when he died on October 29, 2014, of colon cancer. He did, however, go on to win the election. Following Freeman’s victory, it was determined that the councils of King and Pierce counties, which Freeman was meant to represent in the state legislature, needed to elect one of the Democratic Party’s three nominees to replace Freeman. The Democrats presented three nominees, but both county councils were uncertain.
They were unsure whether they were supposed to hold a joint voting session or vote separately to select Freeman’s replacement. The councils remained undecided until the 60 days required by law elapsed. This automatically gave Governor Jay Inslee the power to select one of the nominees as a state legislator. Inslee appointed Carol Gregory—who happened to be the same person the Democratic Party wanted to replace Freeman.
