LUBBOCK, TX — In what experts are calling “arithmetically improbable but technically correct,” Libertarian city council candidate Reid Halvorsen has officially placed 8th in a 3-way race, stunning voters, further humiliating his party, and raising serious questions about how that’s even possible.
“Initially we thought it was a typo,” said election analyst Dr. Linda Carnes. “But we ran the numbers five times. Somehow, this man came in 8th. In a race with three candidates.”
The official vote tally showed Halvorsen receiving 0.4% of the vote, just below a write-in campaign for “Anyone Else,” the ghost of Eugene Debs, a TikTok personality named ‘FreeTheSnakes’, and a blank ballot mistakenly counted eight times due to a tabulation error.
According to the county election board, Halvorsen placed eighth due to a mix of clerical error, abstentions counted as protest votes, and something called ‘inverse ranked-choice recalibration,’ which no one could fully explain without pulling out a whiteboard.
“It’s rare,” said County Clerk Diane Reames. “But not unheard of. Especially for that party.”
Halvorsen, who ran on a platform of abolishing streetlights, privatizing stormwater management, and replacing the city council with “a confederation of Discord servers,” said he remains optimistic.
“This is a huge step for liberty,” Halvorsen said. “We may not have won, or placed, or technically been ranked within the parameters of the race — but we disrupted the system. And that’s what counts.”
At press time, the state affiliate had unanimously passed a resolution declaring Halvorsen’s eighth-place finish “a resounding strategic victory” and appointed him Political Director, citing his “unmatched experience with ballot visibility.”
