It’s at least happened once.

Last night at the Idaho Atheists’ monthly “Meet an Atheist” gathering we were joined by a member of the Mountain Home, ID City Counsel, Geoff Schroeder. Geoff is an very out and open atheist and yet was still elected in a military town (home of Mountain Home AFB) in Idaho. One thing that that I’m sure helped is the fact that he is a 22 year military and Iraq War veteran. He was even elected as a Republican. That’s right, an atheist Republican elected official in Idaho.

Looking at his record, one thing that’s interesting is any complaint against churches in town (zoning, parking, etc) he has so far always backed the church, including one case where he did so with the opposition of a fellow council member who’s also a member of the denomination who’s church was in question.

One story Geoff told was about when he was asked to lead the invocation for a council meeting. He agreed, folded his arms, and stared at the clock for about a minute. Eventually the person next to him nudged him and asked him when he was going to start and he just said that the invocation was done and they could move on. If he had some warning he would have put together some grand invocation to the FSM, which would have just been awesome, but a minute of awkward silence….that’s a pretty damn good way of handling it with no notice.

So yes, atheists can get elected to public office, even in Idaho.