I think I've finally decided who will get my vote in November. His name is "Fuck You".
Actually, his full name is "Fuck you, you're all a bunch of pussies who won't stop doing your damnedest to turn this country into a complete tyranny just to kill time while you let terrorists get organized enough to blow it the fuck up," repeated as many times as the voting machine will allow me to type. The goal will be to find out what the character limit is for a write-in candidate. Assuming that such a limit exists, I will make sure to report it back to you on this website.
The fulfillment system for the company I work for has a limit of 35 characters on each of its customer address line fields. Unfortunately, only 30 characters actually print out on the shipping labels. Therefore, if you find a way to submit a fraudulent credit card order to us, you better not have an address of "The little red house with the white shutters, Nigeria" because there's at least a fifty-fifty chance that your next-door neighbor with the blue shutters is going to get the package. But I digress.
Here's an idea. If there's a really long character limit, instead of voting for "Fuck You", how about voting for this guy:
"I run a prostitution ring out of my home at 157 Broad Ave., Palisades Park, New Jersey. Every weekend, I have a coke party and hold an open house for teenage girls who are thinking about dropping out of junior high, during which I personally have sex with each one of them. Sort of as a job interview. Then we pledge our allegiance to the planet Saturn and rehearse our plans for our murder-suicide pact, which we're determined to pull off in our Marilyn Monroe and James Dean costumes right smack in the middle of the Oval Office. That is, assuming this message spreads throughout the proper channels via these voting machines just like our secret contact in the US military keeps promising us it will."
Could be fun. Let's see how anonymous the voting system really is.
Here's another good write-in candidate:
"I'm only voting for a write-in candidate because I can't figure out how to work this damn voting machine. (Hint, hint.) Members of all political parties are free to contact me if their candidate should lose the election at...." Etc., etc.
How do you think they collate all the write-in candidates? Are "Kermit the Frog" and "Kermit T. Frog" considered the same person?
What if I write in one of the candidates who made the actual ballot, but I spell his name wrong?
What if I know someone named "Mickey Moose" and want him to be president? Does my vote get lumped in with the "Mickey Mouse" votes?
How much time do you think is allotted to figuring out the identity of your write-in candidate? For example, let's say you forget the person's name, but you can accurately describe his appearance?
What if you phrase your vote as a riddle? Do they have people paid to solve riddles, or do they just throw out your vote? If so, how do they account for votes that are thrown out? They must throw out some votes, right? If your write-in candidate is "ZZZZZZZZZZZZ", for example, I can't imagine that they tally that as an actual person. You'd assume that only actual people are tallied, but do you think they have a tally of the votes for non-people?
I think it would be funny if you typed in the name of a meeting location, along with a time, date, and a monetary reward offer. Then hide out with a camera and see who shows up.
Here's another one. Allude to your membership in a foreign government's elite paramilitary organization and type in a website address. Don't tell anyone about this website and see how many hits you get from .gov domains.
Maybe this could be your write-in candidate: "VOTING MACHINE FATAL ERROR DO NOT TALLY RESULTS PLEASE REBOOT."
Or how about this one: "Confirmed - Electronic Ballot-Stuffing of Northeastern United States Successful."
If you can get a few thousand people all over the United States to type in stuff like these last two, I bet you could get the story onto CNN. You could make Bush/Gore look like the good old days.
Then again, maybe my suspicion is right. Maybe nobody reads the damn write-in votes.
