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It is completely unimportant who will vote… But what is extraordinarily important is the people who count the votes and how - Joe Stalin
Why...
When we can create such marvel’s as the Hadron Collider, the Millau Viaduct, eye transplants and microwave popcorn, can we not create tamper proof voting systems? My American niece’s partner is in the election business and has a brain the size of a planet, so I only understand about ten percent of what he says. But if I grasp the basic gist you could make things 100% foolproof… but no one agrees unanimously to the system yet! As you all know I steer away from any personal political stance on these missives, but I would have thought life in the US, Venezuela, Iran, Russia, China and India might have been less bumpy if there was 100% confidence in the X cast for a vote. But of course outside of the first example I presume the people in power in the other countries listed don’t really want a foolproof system. They want one they can manipulate. There are those who say the same for the US… but that’s a dangerous path I don’t want to go down. Rather like playing hopscotch on a mine field.
...and another thing
Vote rigging, tweaking, or shaving, I suspect, is present in anything that has people casting a vote. I have zero evidence to support this but I have a sneaking feeling that everything from the election of the Prom Queen in Pigsknuckle Arkansas to the winner of Togo’s Got Talent can somehow be subverted along the way. And that’s the real problem. It’s not the vote. It’s why the vote was cast in the first place that is impossible to determine.
If you can get to the voter, you don’t need to jiggle with the numbers. They will all pan out just peachy anyway.
...and another thing
I know from first hand experience during my brief foray into the pop world that serious money would change hands to find out which shops were being monitored to make up the charts. After a particularly frenzied buying period in these shops I know of one artist who stayed for several weeks at number two following deep suspicion that not all the buyers were bona fide fans.
...and another thing
I understand that choice is governed by what we least want to do, rather than what we would most like to do. Perhaps voting should work like that. So the candidate who is least disliked wins. At least that might force some of the rougher debaters to tone down the rhetoric and it’s an election no one would want to win!
Hey ho pip pip