Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Politics, fund-raising, and XKCD - who’d have believed it
Read more about: Blogging, Web Roundup
Well the story of the US campaign season, how a cartoon managed to raise $95,000 in days for a new aspiring politician, Sean Tevis in Kansas. If you’ve ever read XKCD read on. (Wikipedia entry for XKCD)
It’s not often I see a really smart link to popular culture but I’ve got to tip my hat to Sean Tevis, who’s taken a nice leaf from one of the Internet’s leading web comics, xkcd. Sean’s idea started after two weeks of canvassing and twenty five dollars to show (its the US money talks…). He figured that as an IA (Information Architect) with web programming skills he could find some other way to fund his political campaign rather than continuing the door to door which wasn’t working. 40 or 50 hours later he had the campaign poster below done in xkcd style.
More details on the actual funding appeal/poster and a WSJ article with some more details and an interview of Mr Tevis.
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
Important to note that this won’t work for everyone - his is actually well written, and very much in the style of XKCD. I shudder to anticipate the first Irish attempt at this.
It does go to show how to do it right but I suspect you’re on the money Keith and the first Irish attempt will probably be very cringe-worthy, hopefully not but …
Follow the results by using the bottom of this page:
http://www.kssos.org/ent/johnson.html
Thanks Sean - it’ll be interesting to see the result. I hope he gets it as it’d be nice to see the idea work out for him plus I like his background and policies.
The results for the Kansas House of Representatives 15th district with all the county and state precincts reporting have seen Siegfreid hold out over Tevis.
Party-Name County Votes & Percent State Votes & Percent
D-Sean Tevis 4839 48% 4839 48%
R-Arlen H. Siegfreid 5264 52% 5264 52%
XKCD is just not known enough i guess
In fairness for an absolute newbie to politics running on a fairly liberal democratic platform in a definitely red state I’d have to tip my hat to Mr Tevis for giving it a fair run. It is a pity that XKCD wasn’t enough but then the story might have been different if he was running in San Fran or closer to the Valley where it might be a little more mainstream.