Ross: A creative solution to fix America’s election anxiety
Nov 18, 2020, 7:06 AM | Updated: 10:16 am
Empty envelopes that have already been opened are bundled together at King County Elections headquarters on Nov. 3, 2020, in Renton, Washington. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Elections are supposed to be the ultimate reflection of the will of the people, and yet I think we can all agree that measuring our will by making us submit 152,604,567 pieces of paper is creating far too much anxiety.
For example, the elections board in Wayne County, Michigan, almost refused to accept the latest tally of votes because in some locations the number of voters didn’t equal the number of ballots. Some of the local counts were off by two, or three, or four votes, which doesn’t sound like much in a state that counted five-and-a-half million ballots.
But that’s our system for discerning the will of the people. If you can raise questions about the will of even a few of the people, the will of the rest of them suddenly evaporates.
Still, we can take heart – I predict that 50 years from now, none of this will be necessary.
Because in 50 years, the will of the people will be decided by our Fit Bits, which will monitor our pulse and perspiration as we watch TV and browse the internet, and will report to the local election board with complete objectivity which politicians see the world as we do.
Those politicians will then get a text message assigning them to the job that matches their LinkedIn profile, and then, best of all, when we get tired of them, they will be fired automatically by tweet. Much as we do now.
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