No, 15,000 People Probably Did Not Write in Harambe

Dana EisenbergNov 9th, 2016, 4:38 pm
 

Obviously all of our Facebook and Twitter feeds today are totally inundated with posts about yesterday’s election. A lot of them are hard to read. Lots of people are sad. Others are happy. Many have lost faith in the United States, so much so that they’ve shared a piece of “news” that 15,000 people voted for Harambe, the gorilla who was killed in May after a small child ended up in his enclosure at a zoo.

Unsubstantiated Tweets saying that Harambe had been written in 11,000 times were retweeted tens of thousands of times last night.

Then, the number somehow grew.

Eventually, Daily Snark picked it up, and today I’ve seen it on my Facebook feed more than a few times. Lots of people Tweeted photos of ballots with Harambe written on them which further perpetuated the rumors that people in fact did write in a gorilla for President.

Unfortunately for you brilliant and hilarious people, that’s not how it works, and not only did you waste your vote in one of the most important elections in history on a dead gorilla, your vote for said gorilla literally did not count. In 32 states, in order to even be a write-in candidate, you have to be officially registered as one. That means that for anyone who wrote in themselves, their moms, or Selena Gomez, your vote most likely just didn’t register.

And look, accuse me of starting the Harambe birther movement all you want, but I’m going to say something controversial here: A Harambe presidency would not have been constitutional. He’s not a natural born citizen. He also was only 17 years old, putting him well under the age restrictions that require a president to be 35 years old. Oh, and he’s a gorilla. A dead gorilla.

[featured image via screen grab]

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