Excerpt from “Could Deez Nuts hang at the Minnesota State Fair?” by Michael Rietmulder at City Pages:
[Mark] Meyer, who chairs the Independence Party of Minnesota, confirms that Mr. Nuts emailed his crew seeking an endorsement. At the time, they had no idea Nuts was only an armpit hair past puberty. But obviously the name raised a red flag.
“The name was a little funny of course,” Meyer says. “Jokingly we said, ‘We’ll be glad to consider your application, but we have an evaluation fee of $10,000.’ … We weren’t taking it completely seriously.”
While Meyer says Nuts’ proposal to require a balanced federal budget jibes with their goals, the party boss says they would not endorse an ineligible candidate. After all, they’re a real party with a serious agenda and stuff. But “moderate” doesn’t mean boring.
“We think some changes need to be made in our political process and the two-party system is broken. We mean business about that,” Meyer says. “But we also want to have some fun and here’s an opportunity to have some fun and show how ridiculous presidential politics can be.”
In sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea, the chairman says his party is considering inviting Deez Nuts to hang at their Minnesota State Fair booth.
“My first thought right now is why not? It’s fun,” Meyer says. “If he wants to come up and have a corn dog at our booth at the fair and talk about presidential politics, that’s the perfect place for Deez Nuts to be.”
True, on both counts.
I don’t have any problem with what Olson did, I agree it’s had positive effects.
I just also agree, it’s a legitimate concern that the FEC database of candidates shouldn’t be flooded with fake joke filings, and that’s an easy problem to fix.
There’s a guy running as a communist that lives with his mother. Fitting.
For real… them haters need to raise up off Deez Nuts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35yNjA4F5B4
Deez nuts endorsed my opponent. Right after that she dropped in the polls. Sorry deez, can’t touch this.
I think yins need to lighten up. This kid could do wonders for our movement. He’s already sparked a number of conversations among my friends and I about independent, alternative party, and write-in candidates.
States don’t really have this problem when it comes to ballot access filings and declarations of candidacy. That’s why people who want to actually be on the ballot under some joke name or political label have to legally change their name by deed poll first, and only genuine nicknames (e.g. Andy for Andrew) are permitted otherwise.
It does seem like a ridiculous oversight that the Form 2 doesn’t come with the standard boilerplate about filling out the information under penalty of perjury. I think if you had that you wouldn’t even really need notarization, though that’s not unreasonable either.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1746
The number of entries exploded after 8/19, the same date the Deez Nuts story got out. “Dis Pussy”, “Dat Ass”, and now “King Donald Trump’s Hairy Ballsack” are all FEC recognized candidates. These were all submitted electronically without any signature. A good solution would be to require these documents be notarized and have a valid signature.
That isn’t a new thing. Deez Nuts isn’t even the first one to get a round of media coverage in this election. The fact that there were several hundred declared candidates, many of them joke filings, had been widely remarked upon even before PPP granted a 15-year-old’s wish on a whim. So it isn’t really Brady Olson that’s to blame, he himself claims to have been inspired by seeing the news that somebody had filed with their cat’s name.
I don’t have any problem with people amusing themselves with a stupid loophole in the system, at least that’s some value being produced by the election thus far. But you’re right it highlights and worsens a problem that can and should be easily fixed. Simply requiring people to give their legal name and affirm that they are eligible would be the obvious solution. The FEC wouldn’t have to really investigate and confirm eligibility, just make it subject to the standard laws about putting false information on government paperwork and that will pretty much solve the problem of joke filings.
That might take a statutory change, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the FEC to asks for and gets that change if so.
Deez Nuts has ruined the utility of the FEC database for determining who is running and who is not running. It has caused an explosion of joke filings and impersonations including:
Kim Jong Un
Osama bin Liftin
Have Sex With Me
There are three Joe Biden impersonators and one impersonating Bill Clinton.
The FEC needs to do something about this because it drowns out legitimate citizen candidates who will not otherwise be covered. The fraud needs to end.