What is a hanging Chad?

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I first heard this term in How I Met Your Mother when Ted dressed up as a hanging Chad for Halloween. I tried to look it up & Google basically just said that it was a voting ballot that people used to punch holes out of. But I feel like I’m missing something.. in the show, they would make fun of Ted for wearing an outdated costume
& would tell him that “the hanging Chad reference
Is very old” & that most people wouldn’t understand it. Which signifies some sort of inside joke or understanding, but I don’t get it. please! Thank you!

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34 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The actual 5 year old answer:

When you punch a hole out of paper, the little piece of paper that came out is called a “chad”. In the presidential election in the year 2000, both candidates got a lot of votes, and they were trying to find ways go to get ahead. One was to say that if someone didn’t punch the chad all the way out of their voting card (to indicate which person you voted for), it didn’t mean the vote counted. So, the “chad” was “hanging” by a little piece of paper when you’d hold the paper up, hence the name.

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