To tell you the truth, I don’t relish the idea of McDonald’s sponsoring referenda. First, it would greatly increase voter turnout. Recent polls suggested that turnout could increase from the standard four per cent to anywhere between fifteen to twenty per cent. It turns out that the draw of a free SuperMac will indeed have a marked impact, given that every voter got one free with their vote.
Of course, something had to be done. This four per cent average is the lowest in all of my five decades of counting experience (and my two decades of voting experience) before that. After all, four per cent was, what, four million votes? Ideally you would want a voter turnout of around sixty per cent, but counting up around fifty million votes was not a particularly attractive prospect for Britain’s few remaining vote counters. That the state employed us was initially a problematic concept, given that the demonstrations about possible vote rigging or misinformation spread away from the His Majesty’s Virtual Reality People’s Parliament (or HMVRPP for ‘short’) and onto the streets. For everyone watching the voting process or the news through their Headbook headset, I understand that to have demonstrations on the street is a shocking concept, but when I was a child, street demonstrations were regular, if not common. As a result, you can imagine just how panicked Government got about it.
At any rate, all the controversy blew away to such an extent where the voters went with it. But the referenda didn’t blow away—they kept coming with alarming rigour and frequency. I only finished my last count yesterday, but I expect to be back in the office tomorrow to count anew. I think that tomorrow’s referendum concerns legislation about waste management, or something. I forget. Maybe that was last week’s. Tomorrow’s could be the one about public listening of music, or about curfews. I forget.
I have been forgetting a lot recently, actually. I should probably retire, but apparently I’m “too valuable” to be let go. Apparently it’s rare to find someone so politically aware in someone so “experienced”. Ha! If they only had the nerve to tell me that my age makes me valuable, derived as I am from a time where they held elections, not just referenda. I do still remember General Elections. How quaint they seem now. It did always strike me as odd that someone would be voted in only for ten years of complaint during their party’s term.
Things are much simpler now since the dissolution of the European Union and the establishment of State Referenda. It certainly keeps the country’s bureaucracy ticking. In fact, we depend on them. I can’t imagine how The British Kingdom could claim to be democratic without referenda. Scotland, since leaving us, have no referenda at all—all their claims of financial security and social harmony must be a lot of hot air. No-one really knows what goes on over The Wall of Unity, of course. Ever since they voted leave in their fifth Independence referendum (the final one that they’d ever have) relations have been frosty. Surely they’re not serious about how good representative democracy is. It’s all just lies from their biased media.
Speaking of the media, I think it’s really disappointing that more isn’t done to shut up the young idiots who set up their own VR channels to pretend to be all counter-culture and unique, complaining about their ‘civil liberties’ and their ‘rights’. I never had their cheek when I was their age: I never demonstrated against welfare cuts, or the so-called “erosion” of democratic processes, and look where it got me! I have a hefty wage, job security, and a nice state exception from ever having to vote. In fact, McDonald’s sponsorship of referenda voting will do my chances of retirement a world of good: with more voters, they’ll have to employ more counters which will mean I can train up some new recruits, specifically chosen for their political impartiality—or apathy, it matters little—and then retire with cake, celebrations and a knighthood. Maybe they’ll even get me a gift of a new VR headset to live my soaps with. My old headset’s 10K display is so dated now.
Actually, come to think of it, yes, this sponsorship is excellent news. I can’t wait to see all the happy voters leave the polling station with their SuperMac in hand. I still think that voting should all be done over VR, but the traditionalism of a personal vote is quaint and reassuring, in the same way I was delighted to see all referenda about the deposition of the monarchy resoundingly voted down.
Of course, I do sometimes feel a pang of guilt about spoiling all those republican votes, but I feel that, in my line of work, sometimes the most important civil servant is the one who dots the is and crosses the ts—even if the letters themselves occasionally have to be added in. People like me, who loyally serve the country, are really key for social stability. These people who actually vote are idiots: they don’t understand their vote, and any cry they make of ‘democracy’ deserves to be ignored. Really, by being foolish enough to vote, they’re just part of the process themselves.
