When Greene won, it was absolutely inexplicable. But the one thing everybody was suddenly certain of was that he hadn't won the election on his own merits. Rawl's people insisted the election had been tampered with, that there were irregularities in all the districts Greene won
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That Greene was possibly a Republican plant, designed to sabotage the South Carolina Democrats' chance of claiming a senate seat Other pundits suggested explanations even MORE unflattering to the SC electorate; that Greene had won because the ballot listed him alphabetically
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Or the surely not-at-all racist explanation that South Carolinians mistook Alvin Greene for soul singer The Reverend Al Green There was no rationalization for his victory that did not paint voters as either deceived, apathetic, or profoundly imbecilic
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Replying to @Nymphomachy
There were a lot of people trying to argue that Black voters had voted for Greene because he was Black, even though the vast majority of them had no way to know what People started arguing that Greene with an extra E was a "Black-coded spelling" and such
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
(Which is mostly pulled from thin air - I think someone crunched the numbers on the census and eventually concluded that, nationwide, Greenes are slightly more likely to be Black than Greens, but that's because Greene is a *Southern* spelling of the name)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Or, rather, that archaic English spellings of names are more common in the South I mean the most famous Greene (Graham Greene) is a white guy So, you know, inconclusive
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
The other famous Greenes that come to mind - Lorne Greene from Bonanza, Ashley Greene who played Alice Cullen in Twilight - are also quite white The most famous Black Green, Al Green, as you point out, *doesn't* have the E
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Honestly the best explanation, barring fraud, is just the "normal name hypothesis" You get a lot of people who feel like voting on something despite their low level of knowledge or investment, they just vote for whoever has the most "normal" name
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Or, you know, if people want to protest vote against someone they don't like, they're psychologically much more likely to do it if the unknown challenger has a "generic" name so they can imagine their protest vote is going to a "generic politician"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
"Alvin Greene" isn't a MUCH more whitebread Anglo name than "Vic Rawl" but it still clearly wins the "more normal" contest
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The most cynical deployment of this principle, of course, was the infamous "Bagel Lady Judge", where an LA Superior Court Judge with an impeccable record, Dzintra Janavs, was unseated by Lynn Olson, the proprietor of a coffee shop on the PCH known for excellent bagels
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Lynn Olson did meet the minimum requirements for the bench, having a JD and having been admitted to the California state bar, but had, unfortunately, never actually practiced law, finding that the cafe was a more rewarding pursuit
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
It's not uncommon for people to find they wasted their time and money going to law school in this way It is uncommon for them to decide to make good on this investment years later by cynically gaming the system of judicial elections in the nastiest possible way
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