Elections and cats

[vilakins]

I'm working at a polling place on election day (8 November) and last night I went to a paid training session.

Here everyone gets two votes: one for a candidate in their electorate, and the other for a party. The winning candidates get seats in parliament, and parties get extra seats (if they get enough votes) to make up the distribution in the party vote.

Anyway, for vote count training, we used fictional candidates, and parties too, like the Fabian and Transubstantiation Parties. What we do is pass the votes round a table, keeping only the ones each person is counting. For party votes, I was assigned... the Free Trade Party (Jenna!) and, yes, the Freedom Party. Free Trade got three votes last night, but the Freedom Party got none. Sorry, Blake. Must be because all your supporters were gunned down at their rally.

And since we're on the subject of elections, here are two promotional vids for the feline candidate, Ginger, done by those guy who made An Engineer's Guide to Cats.

An Engineer's Guide to Voting (Ginger Cat for President)
An Engineer's Guide to Voting T-shirts

Comments

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Free Trade got three votes last night, but the Freedom Party got none. Sorry, Blake. Must be because all your supporters were gunned down at their rally.

Bwahahaha! This amuses me beyond all reason. :)

And thanks for linking to that video! I'd seen the original one, but not the voting one, and it's deeply amusing. Damn, if I hadn't already voted, I might go for Ginger. :)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I laughed, then said lamely, "There's a Freedom Party on a TV show."

Ginger would make a great president. Claudia very much approves of her tuna platform.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm sure Happiness would be a strong supporter of the tuna platform, as well. :)

[crycraven.livejournal.com]

I want to be in the Freedom Party! Without the obligatory death, though. Hooray for jobs! Are the other people nice, and, most importantly, do they provide tea and biscuits?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Sadly I don't think anyone's actually standing this year.

It's only for the day (a long one: 23-15 hours) and we have to bring our own food and drink because the polling place may not provide anything more than hot water. The other people seem very nice though.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

I would definitely vote for Ginger! Or for my Tygr, or for your other cats. They would be better than THAT what came out from our regional elections (ble!)...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Of course! They are noble creatures who mean what they say, but that of course disqualifies them. ;-)

[thetisonline.livejournal.com]

Freedom Party! I can see how meetings and rallies might be a problem though. No-one else laughed, eh? Fans are getting thin!

The engineers were so ... like engineers. I know way too many. Go Ginger!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I suppose they were all concentrating on the training--I may not have noticed if I hadn't been assigned those two parties. I don't meet many B7 fans myself though. Well, I wasn't one till this century.

[thetisonline.livejournal.com]

Wow ... you made up for lost time with Blake's 7. You are our resident Vila expert.

Did you have any sci-fi fandoms last century?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Lots, but I didn't write fanfic till I fell for B7 and wanted to make things right for Vila. I'm still not driven to write for much else. I'm not sure what makes me want to write; it's certainly not just loving a series.

[thetisonline.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting, isn't it? It's Vila in particular.

I've wanted to write for all my favourites, although there has only been one or two others besides B7.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Vila got to me. Actually some other characters did too in the past, usually from books which I rewrote in my head, but I never did anything till I discovered fanfic at trhe same time as B7.

It's midnight and I'm off to bed. :-)

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

I hope it goes well on election day...

The 'Fabian' party sounds to me as if it would be made up of male models with perfect hair. :-p

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'm sure it will (unless you mean the result). I've done it before and it was rather fun, though a very long day.

Rodney Hide for Emperor of Epsom again? ;-)

I assume it was based on the Fabian Society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society). Male models might offer an interesting campaign though. :-)

[imhilien.livejournal.com]

Rodney Hide as Epsom Emperor again... hmm. At least he can dance. :-p

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

LOL! And he has a sense of humour. I'm in the Tamaki electorate; no flashy eccentrics there.

[daiseechain.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out the Engineer's Guide to Cats. Will have to show it to hubby tonight.
I hope you get good weather for election day.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

We usually do! Of course, as it's Labour Weekend now, it's raining. :-( Do you do a special vote from there? I did when I was overseas.

Those guys are so deadpan funny.