Thoughts!Non-ThoughtsThoughts
| The Country That Could(n't) Count[2000-12-14]Once upon a time, there was a country where they cared very much for democracy. So much, in fact, that they eagerly helped others maintaining or gaining democracy; sometimes even when those others didn't want help, or indeed, didn't want democracy. And when those countries that needed help held elections, observers were sent to make sure everything happened in due manner. Then, one day, this country had an election of their own. It was a fairly simple election, as only two candidates could gather enough money to have a chance to win. The two candidates flew hither and thither to convince people to vote for them, up till the day of the election. Now, to be sure that people didn't vote for the wrong person, this country had some fairly special rules; you didn't vote for the person you wanted elected, but rather on a person who had promised to vote for that person, called an elector. This had a somewhat strange effect; the candidate who the most people wanted to win wasn't guaranteed to win; instead, the candidate who managed to get the most number of "elector"-votes would win (the somewhat puzzling fact that those electors were allowed to totally disregard from what they'd promised before the election is something we can ignore for now.) Now, everything would've been fine if it wasn't for the fact that the election of the electors was very even. So even, in fact, that the result of the country-wide election came down to the result of one single area. An area governed by the brother of one of the candidates. Because the election in this area was particularly close, noone really knew who had won. One would have thought this would prompt a area-wide recount? Well, this wasn't what happened. Instead, one of the candidates wanted the votes of some smaller parts of that area recounted, and the other candidate wanted the counting to stop as he was in the lead. A lot of strange things was uncovered, most of them relating to some person named "Chad", who apparently had dimples (rumours even claim he was pregnant...) Finally, however, the elders of this area decided that an area-wide recount should be performed after all. One of the candidates didn't like this however, and asked the country-elders to stop this. As these elders wanted to hear why this candidate wanted the recount stopped, they stopped the recount and asked him to tell them why. The other candidate was of course also allowed to tell them why he wanted the recount to continue. Then they pondered. And pondered. And pondered. And pondered. But they couldn't really decide. Because they knew that if they decided to allow the recount, the candidate whose friends had seen most of them elected (because in this country, the elders, too, were elected rather than chosen on merit, all in the name of democracy) might face the risk of losing. But on the other hand, if they chose to stop the recount, they had to find a good reason for this. Then they realised, that if they just waited long enough, a recount would take too long to be finished on time. Thus they pretended to ponder some more. Then finally, to make sure that a recount would be impossible to finish off, they told the public that this decision wasn't up to them after all, rather, it was up to the area elders who had originally decided to perform the recount. But they also said that it was important that those made another decision. Well, all this had gotten one of the candidates bored with everything. He had realised, that no matter how hard he fought, the other candidate would win, not because he had fewer votes, but because the country elders wanted the other candidate to win. And he also realised that the country needed some sort of leadership, and he decided that bad leadership was better than no leadership. Thus he forfeit. And so ends this story. Until next time, when this country once again decides that another country's democracy is in danger. |
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