Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

In certain corners of America, there is a mood of relief and joy. In others, rampant despair.

This partly stems from the rather limited number of candidates at the voters' disposal.

Unless, that is, you choose your own. In that searing home of live-and-let-live that is Georgia, almost 4,000 people knew exactly who was the right man to lead its state into the future.

No, it wasn't someone from R.E.M. Nor was it Trisha Yearwood or Jimmy Carter.

It was that bard of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin.

The Athens Banner-Herald reported that almost 4,000 free-thinking Georgians deemed Darwin the natural selection and placed his name on the ballot in the 10th Congressional District -- in opposition to Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican.

Can it be that so many Georgians are so evolved? Can it be that these were all independent-minded individualists who somehow came to be of like independent minds?

It seems that Broun himself might have stimulated this rather classy action. For he was loud and proud in his denunciation of evolutionary theory, calling it "lies straight from the pit of hell."

This seems to have prompted a University of Georgia plant biologist, Jim Leebens-Mack, to launch a Facebook page. Sadly, it was not called "Truths Straight From the Pit of Hell."

It was called "Darwin for Congress."

Naturally, it would have been a little difficult to disinter Darwin and make him stand at all, never mind stand for office.

And it will take more than 4,000 dissenters to oust the entrenched traditionalist. Broun still managed to garner 16,980 votes.

Perhaps next time an opponent who is, um, alive might stand a better chance of kicking Broun to the curb.