When Barack Obama came to Tech on April 14, 2007, his goal at the time was to gather enough support in Georgia to defeat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. On Tuesday, nearly 19 months later, he succeeded in his ultimate goal of being elected the president of the United States.
While all of Georgia’s electoral votes went to Republican candidate John McCain, who won the state with 52% of the vote to Obama’s 47%, votes cast at the Student Center precinct showed a definite preference for Obama. Of 1,023 votes cast for president, 688 (67.3%) went to Obama, with 295 (28.8%) cast for McCain, 28 (2.7%) for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and 12 (1.2%) for write-ins.
According to results posted outside the Student Center, Tech’s own George P. Burdell received write-in votes for many of the races. Other popular write-in candidates among Tech students included cartoon characters (Batman, SpongeBob, Daffy Duck, Mickey Mouse); famous athletes, mainly quarterbacks (Brett Favre, John Elway, Matt Ryan, Tim Tebow, Sidney Crosby); Hollywood stars (Chuck Norris, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton); Tech personalities (Gary Schuster, Paul Johnson); and finally, numerous instances of Tech students voting for, presumably, themselves.