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 in the show, they would make fun of Ted for wearing an outdated costume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
When you use a hole-punch for paper, the little circle that gets punched out is called a ‘chad’. A “hanging chad” is one that doesn’t completely get separated from the paper.
This caused a problem in the 2000 US Presidential election, specifically in the state of Florida. We were still primary using paper ballots and mechanical voting machines at the time, which would punch out a hole to mark the selection on the ballot. It was deemed that a “hanging chad” was an incomplete ballot, and was not counted as a valid vote. There were thousands of them. Enough to affect the outcome of the election.
Latest Answers