Editor’s Note: Ask The Fiddler is a lifestyle advice column that aims to remedy more chaos and confusion than it creates. Questions may be submitted to us here at Art of the Prank, and good luck.
Dear Fiddler,
The next presidential election is not that far off. Can you suggest any tactics to get me into the White House?
Sarah in Anchorage
Dear Sarah,
There are tunnels. But you are talking about getting elected, I assume. That will be tricky. So of course you”™ll need tricks.
The top candidates will probably spend around a billion dollars each on the next presidential election. How about, put your billion into whiskey? There don”™t appear to be any laws against voting while drunk, and it is certainly a time-honored tradition.
Speaking of the old tried and true, you could just go basic — buy votes.
I saw somewhere that politicians shell out around $50 per voter in the major elections. So, how about if you skip the ads and events and just hand out cash?
Of course, being a values kind of gal, maybe you have some reservations about handing out cash. By all means, do the honorable thing. Go with gift cards.
Gift cards worked recently in Mexico, though there was a slight problem. Thousands of bribed voters thought they were getting a grocery card worth $37.50 but it turned out to be worth only $7.50. Damn sleazy politicians, can”™t trust “˜em even to bribe you fair and square. So the citizens, now known as los indignados, complained to the media.
Another great source of voters is dead people. A report says there were two million registered dead voters in 2012. When you think of how few voters (537) it took to defeat Al Gore, a couple of million dead people could provide a real boost.
And the dead do really turn out, as demonstrated in Nassau County, NY.
If you”™re queasy about turning the election into a zombie jamboree (seems unlikely, you being a politician) maybe you could cut a deal with some noncitizen voters. In your case, that could require some adjustments in doctrine. In the last election a few noncitizens were “mistakenly” allowed to vote after showing driver licenses. There are 11 million or so noncitizens residing in the U.S., a hefty pool of potential voters.
But then, instead of adding to your base, why not purge those who will vote against you? Author Greg Palast says this can be done in huge blocks, like 50,000 at a swat. He says millions of votes get tossed in the garbage in the major elections.
Reasons given might be threatening to any AOTPer. They include that the voter is inactive, insane, a felon, an illegal alien, or gives a misspelled name.
Most of the culling is the result of efforts by right-wing billionaires, but they are not entirely alone at it. Palast cites Barrack Obama in his run for the Senate, and “the Hispanic elite” in New Mexico, as having used the tactic.
Or maybe you could just trust the American voter. Some whackos fare pretty well in our elections. Consider that 225,000 Texans voted for Larry Kilgore in a recent primary. Kilgore will be a candidate for governor of the Lone Star State in the next election.
He wants Texas out of the U.S. and advocates Biblical law.
Biblical law, in Larry”™s book, means the death penalty for abortion or adultery, flogging for cussing or transvestism. The death penalty would also apply to murder, and “an eye for an eye” for lesser crimes involving personal injury. Strange though it may seem for one of such enlightened views, he opposes public education.
Yours Truly,
The Fiddler
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image: durangotexas.blogspot.com
The Fiddler is a creation of W.J. Elvin III