UnNews:Journalists discover Republican Alan Keyes is running for president

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

7 February 2008

Despite going to great lengths to keep his campaign - and identity - a secret, journalists have discovered that Alan Keyes is running for president.

NEW YORK, New York -- A day after the chaos of Super Tuesday, journalists were shocked to discover that ultra-conservative African-American Alan Keyes is running for President in the Republican primaries. Initial reports of this development were dismissed as inaccurate, with editors believing it was a simple case of confusion, as Alan Keyes did in fact run in the year 2000. "Someone must have made a typo and written 2008 instead of 2000," was the gut response from the chief editor at the New York Times. But additional research proved this was no mistake.

Keyes apparently declared his candidacy months ago, back in September. He even has a campaign website, a staff, and "even a handful of people willing to donate money for his run," says one investigative reporter, though admitting he wasn't able to locate a single such person. The former ambassador to the United Nations is running on the platform that he is "the best of both worlds," by being both black and conservative.

Through all of January's caucuses and primaries, however, Keyes was never mentioned in any election results, keeping his candidacy secret from the world. But close analysis of the full results from certain Super Tuesday states revealed an anomaly. An intrepid young writer for the Washington Post was the first to discover that a few hundred votes nationwide appeared to have been cast for Alan Keyes. He initially thought those voters wrote-in his name as a joke, but further investigation revealed that Keyes was actually present as a valid choice on the ballots.

"It's fairly certain that all the votes for Keyes were cast mistakenly by confused voters," says one media analyst, "but the mere fact that Dr. Keyes is running is a real shocker." News networks have begun internal discussions on whether to include the candidate on their vote-count tickers and pie charts during election night broadcasts. CNN decided to do so, but to save implementation time, the number next to Keyes' name will be hardcoded to display a zero.

News of Keyes' candidacy was actually a big relief for Republican party officials, who until now struggled to explain certain discrepancies in their ballot counts. "For example," explains one official, "in the California primary, the total number of votes cast exceeded the sum of McCain's, Romney's, Huckabee's, Paul's, and even Giuliani's, Thompson's and Hunter's tallies. We were never able to explain the extra 14 votes, but now we know - they were cast for Keyes!"

Journalists are investigating whether any other previously unknown candidates are also running for President, but concede that it's unlikely. "I mean, Keyes makes Mike Gravel look like a front-runner, so I don't see how anyone out there could be getting even less votes," said a Chicago Tribune reported.

Sources

• Alan Keyes "Alan Keyes for President" Alan Keyes, February 6, 2008