On Sunday, 57-year-old Ion Aliman was reelected as mayor of Deveselu, Romania. A member of the Social Democrat Party, he won by an overwhelming landslide. The only glitch is that he had died 10 days before the election from COVID-19.
From AP:
His death came too late to remove his name from Sunday's ballot, but the news of his passing spread fast through the village, home to just over 3,000 people…
To honor the man they admired, hundreds of Deveselu villagers went to the polling stations Sunday and voted for Aliman anyway.
After preliminary election results showed late Sunday that Aliman had won 1,057 out of the 1,600 votes cast in Deveselu, a large group of villagers visited his grave to light candles and pay their respects. A video shared widely on social media showed people with flashlights and candles gathered around Aliman's grave, some of them saying "This is your victory" and "We will make you proud, we know that from somewhere up there you are watching."
Image: Wikimedia commons user "Paf" CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
