While many of America’s politicians are called clowns, no one actually meant it literally. In Brazil, however, an illiterate clown was recently elected in a landslide election! Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, better known as Tiririca the Clown, which translates to Grumpy, received over 1.3 million votes in Brazil’s congressional elections. He received more than double the number of votes than the next closest competitor in the state of Sao Paulo.
So why exactly did citizens vote Grumpy into congress? No, they didn’t go insane; at least not completely. Grumpy ran on the slogan, “What does a congressman do?” He pledged that if they voted him in he would do absolutely nothing to make laws or actually do his job, but he would tell citizens what exactly congressmen do.
Voters seemed to love the idea and believed the system so corrupt, even electing a clown couldn’t hurt! In fact, they the competitors tried to disqualify him on the grounds that he is completely illiterate, but all that did was encourage even more support for Grumpy, resulting in a landslide victory!