The dorky Easter eggs hidden in 2020 campaign websites

ASCII art fun.
 By  Marcus Gilmer and Sasha Lekach  on 

With the 2020 presidential race heating up, candidates are driving as many people as they can to their websites for donations, events, and everything else. But behind the curtain, some of them hid a few Easter eggs on their campaign websites.

Of course, we already explored some of those with a ranking of every 404 error page from each candidate's site, but there are a small number of fun things to discover once you dig a little deeper.

Developers will occasionally hide some fun little surprises in the source code of the websites they create, and 2020 candidates are no exception. After diving through mounds of html, we came across three examples of fun ASCII art in the sites of John Delaney, Eric Swalwell, and Amy Klobuchar.

Swole Springsteen fan Delaney has a pretty simple one in his site's source code, reading "GO JOHN GO!" We're not gonna fault them for the lack of commas that are needed because, hey, they put in good effort to begin with.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Similar to Delaney's example is that of Swalwell, who also has a pretty simple, yet neat example in his site.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

But perhaps the best example that we uncovered belonged to Sen. Klobuchar whose site goes beyond spelling out her name. It's a bit more complex, it's got emojis, and, it's got pizazz!

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

It's worth noting that both Swalwell and Klobuchar used the services of web design company Scotch Digital.

While there's still time for the other candidates to add some Easter eggs to their sites, we think that Cory Booker should invest in some Hot Pocket ASCII art, Beto O'Rourke in something punk rock or Whataburger, and Pete Buttigieg in -- what else? -- the Phish from Vermont.

Topics Politics

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Marcus Gilmer

Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.

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