Flat Earth on the ballot? Debunked claim pops up in US politics.
Humans have known the Earth is round for more than 2,000 years, but a movement questioning that fact has reached the corners of American politics.
People involved in politics in Alabama, Georgia and Minnesota have attracted attention for their links to the flat Earth movement, although their beliefs and reasoning vary.
To some, the beliefs have a spiritual connection. Others say they have a healthy skepticism of scientific consensus.
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Data from a 2021 University of New Hampshire survey shows nearly 10% of Americans believe the Earth is flat, indicating how widespread pseudo-scientific conspiracy theories are emerging in the U.S.
Meanwhile, political observers have met the emergence of some flat Earth beliefs in politics with a mix of alarm and apathy.
Political candidates who believe the Earth is flat and other similar beliefs are “consistent with the current dumbing down and anti-intellectualism of America,” said James Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco. Taylor said these theories have thrived mostly due to the internet and social media compared to 20 years ago.
Flat Earth presence in politics
In Alabama, there’s Dean Odle, a pastor who lost when he ran for governor in 2022, and is now seeking to become lieutenant governor next year. Odle, who describes himself as the “Anti-estabishment Republican,” told USA TODAY he became “a flat-earth/biblical-earther believer” in 2015, even attending the inaugural Flat Earth International Conference in 2017.
He cites his 2019 self-published book, titled “Like Clay Under the Seal,” saying his belief that the Earth is flat initially came as a “spiritual download from the Holy Spirit.” Odle said he’s aware of the flak he gets for his beliefs, but it won’t stop him from running for office to try improving the state’s low-ranking education status and stop the Second Amendment from being attacked.
“I typically refer to Article VI, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which says no religious tests should be put on a person as a qualification or disqualification to run for office,” Odle said. “What that means is we’re all going to have different beliefs, but that doesn’t mean we’re unfit to protect the God-given constitutional rights of all Americans and Alabama residents.”
In Minnesota, Bret Bussman, an Army veteran who became Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District Republican Party chair in March, has reportedly publicly shared videos on social media explaining why he believes the Earth is flat. That includes a 2024 Facebook post titled, “5 Reasons Why I BELIEVE in the Flat Earth (And You Should Too!).”
When asked about his beliefs by the Minnesota Reformer in April, Bussman said, “You can print whatever you want. I spent 20+ years in the Army defending that right, but if you do that, there would be no chance of me speaking with you in the future.”
(USA TODAY has reached out to Bussman for comment.)
And in Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, a former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate and the state’s current District 1 GOP Chair, has announced she’s running for Congress in 2026. She faced scrutiny after interviewing two prominent flat Earth believers on a podcast two years ago, at one point saying:
“Everywhere there’s globes. It’s constant…and that’s what they do to brainwash,” Taylor said. “For me, if it is not a conspiracy, if it is, you know, ‘real,’ why are you pushing so hard? Everywhere I go, every store, you buy a globe, there’s globes everywhere—every movie, every TV show, news media. Why? It doesn’t make sense.”
Taylor has since said she does not believe the Earth is flat, but that she remains skeptical.
“I will clearly state that I simply do not believe anything that I have not seen for myself,” Taylor said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY. “With that being said, I will gladly take one of those 11-minute rocket flights to the stratosphere (Like Katy Perry did) and report back to the people what I see.”
What do flat-earthers believe?
In general, most flat-earthers believe Earth is a flat, hockey-puck-like object covered by a dome, sometimes called a firmament, with walls of ice around the edges of the dome. Flat-earthers think they can prove this because the seas appear level, not curved, and say it is not possible to view the Earth’s curvature of the horizon from airplanes.
They also dispute photographic evidence from space, saying it cannot be trusted and that the NASA moon landing was a hoax.
Flat Earth in politics: What does it mean?
Although some flat Earth believers have been active in politics, there’s no evidence of an organized flat-earther movement in U.S. politics, political experts told USA TODAY.
“You’re unlikely to have candidates openly saying they think the earth is flat because it sounds like a goofier position and a less widely held belief,” said John Cluverius, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “I hesitate to think about this as a conspiracy theory as much as it is an anti-science belief that can be countered with scientific evidence.”
When did people know the Earth is a sphere?
There’s a common flat Earth error, popularized in the 19th century, suggesting that before scientific study began in the 17th century, most people believed the Earth was indeed flat.
However, ancient Greeks figured out the Earth was round around 500 B.C., and it’s been commonly accepted by scholars, navigators and cartographers since.
The flat Earth belief as a conspiracy theory rose again in the mid-1800s in England. The Flat Earth Society was founded in 1956.
Then, flat-earthers had a resurgence in the 2010s as the rise of social media became a portal for conspiracy theorists, as James Taylor, the San Francisco political scientist, mentioned.
Contributing: Elizabeth Wiese, Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Flat Earth on the ballot? Debunked claim pops up in US politics.
