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 in the show, they would make fun of Ted for wearing an outdated costume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!
In: 373
It goes back to the 2000 election. Some voting machines used to punch holes in a piece of paper or had you do it through a grid. Sometimes the piece of paper you punched didn’t completely fall off, this was called a Hanging Chad. There was debate as to whether or not they should be counted, especially with how close the state of Florida came, which determined the outcome of the election. Especially when you consider the Hanging Chad were not counted and a recount was prevented by Florida Governor Jeb Bush to the benefit of his brother who then won the ent8re election.
I believe that episode takes place in 2007, so it’s already a 7 year old joke at that point, and I’m pretty sure those types of ballots haven’t been in use for a while since then
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