In April, voters in Winfield, Missouri, elected Harry Stonebraker to a fourth term as mayor. He won an overwhelming victory, taking 90 percent of the vote. He had also been dead for about a month.
Stonebraker died on March 11, but still got 205 of the 231 votes cast. The county clerk was quoted as saying she wasn't at all surprised, because the mayor had been very popular. "He seemed to get even more popular after he died," she said.
Alderman Bernie Panther, who got 23 votes (there were three write-ins), thus joins the distinguished club of those who have lost elections to dead people. Also in that club: John Ashcroft, who managed to lose his U.S. Senate seat in 2000 to Mel Carnahan, who had died in a plane crash weeks before the election. Carnahan's wife was appointed to that vacant seat. The Winfield Board of Aldermen has said it will appoint an acting mayor until next year, when city voters will get another shot at electing a live mayor.
Link: msnbc.com
Link: Hannibal Courier-Post
