Election season looms in the far-near-future, and you’re grievously unpopular. You’ve tried ingratiating yourself into the various clubs around campus, hoping for a following, but it just won’t stick. Nobody can see you for the stand-up guy you tell them you are. That’s bad, especially during election season. How can you make an ill-intentioned power-grab without a sizable voter base? By fighting dirty, that’s how. There’s no sense in trying to make it in this world as an honest politician. No one ever has, and no one ever will, so just take what’s rightfully someone else’s. You can vote early, and you can vote often, but there’s nothing as foolproof as rigging an election!
Election Road
Step 1: Public Vandalism
Get your ripping fingers out and start tearing down any posters supporting the other candidates. Pull them all down, and no one will know to vote for anyone but you. As an added bonus, tearing down every poster (election related or not) on every bulletin board across campus leaves you even more room to plaster your election-winning smile all over campus, so remember to floss.
Step 2: Egregious Online Falsehoods
Those paper mills won’t stop churning out flyers, so launch a two-pronged attack. In the modern era, all you need is a smartphone and a dream. Flood the internet with libellous posts about your opponents and watch their social stocks plummet to new hells. Post the most outrageous, falsified, woefully ignorant things of all time. Claim the election’s front-runner spends their weekends blowing up anthills, destabilizing the foundations of heritage buildings or fly-fishing. Claim the next guy owns special boots just for stepping on the ears of small dogs. Claim one of them blew up the Hindenburg. The possibilities are endless.
Step 3: Screw-ups
The next step is something a little more technical. Locate the electronic voting machines before election day. Pick one and search the base of the machine for an access panel. Take a Phillips head screwdriver, loosen the four screws on the panel, and pop it off. Next, move all the wires to the side and search the back wall of the casing for a small hole ringed in red paint. Then, take the screwdriver and push it into the hole until you hear a buzz. Now it’s go time. Count ten seconds after the buzz for the internal clock reset. After the reset, use the screwdriver to type out your name in Morse code. If you mess up, just count out the ten-second reset and try again. Once you punch in your name, buzz out six dots to confirm the name. Finally, place the panel cover back over the cavity and screw it back on. You have just successfully performed a universal input override, meaning that every single vote, no matter who it is cast for, will be counted for you. Repeat this process for each machine to guarantee yourself the election. After all, who could argue with electing a candidate that every single person voted for? All that’s left is the reaping of the rewards.
Re-Election Road
Step 1: Old Gold
Getting into office is only half the battle. Holding it is the other — an uphill battle, at that. After the national spectacle that will surely ensue from a scandal as big as student-election voter fraud, the company that makes the voting machines will hire someone competent to fix the bypass. Fortunately, with great power comes great disposable resources. Anything goes, so why not try an all-time classic tactic (clactic?). The art of the gerrymander. Gerrymandering is easy if you know the steps. Start by realizing that UBC doesn’t have electoral districts, and scrap the idea immediately.
Step 2: Time out
With gerrymandering off the table, you have to get a little creative. Change the polling times so they are exclusively open between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on the morning of the springtime daylight saving time change. Make sure that nobody shows up to vote. By lawyering the election regulations just a little bit, you can confuse the oversight committee enough to snag a win. Clause 129 states that “Candidates who are not ranked shall be considered to have a lower preference than any ranked candidate.” This can be interpreted to mean that no votes cast means all candidates are ranked equally. Then, clause 130 runs through the process of the ranked choice system that whittles the options down to two candidates, until part d) which states that “[i]f there is no clear winner as defined in paragraphs 130(a) to 130(c), the election shall be decided by a coin toss by the Elections Administrator witnessed by the Elections Committee and the two remaining candidates.” It is reasonable to assume the expansion of this clause to include a number of candidates greater than two. It is also reasonable to assume that the use of a coin toss implies a somewhat lax mentality surrounding the absoluteness of the randomness. Simply convince the oversight committee to use a set of standardized dice, and load them in your favour. The easiest way to load dice is to heat them in the oven at 250°F for about 5 minutes with the target number facing up. This shifts the weight of the dice in a way that makes the target number appear more often. All you have to do is make sure the dice roll happens in a kitchen.
Step 3: Go big or go home
To cement yourself as the last ever what-ever-you’re-running-for, voting must be abolished entirely. Obviously. It has to be something convoluted though. Announcing the outlawing of all voting is going to cause an immediate riot, because some people “value democracy.” Not us at The Ubyssey, and certainly not you, either, you not-at-all-grubby-fingered, totally-charming student politician, you.
Instead, try Voting by HeartTM. What you have to do is announce to the public that the government is testing out a new technology. The fresh tech is a big machine that scans the entire campus to isolate the individual heartbeats of every student. The machine detects the little flutters a student’s heart makes when they think about the candidate they want elected. Using a complex algorithm, the frequency and magnitude of the flutters of every voter are compiled to determine the most desired candidate among the pool. That person is then elected. The machine has one caveat, however. If a student tells anybody who they want elected, their vote is spoiled. Scientifically, it is completely impossible to build a working version of this machine, but a big metal box covered in blinking lights should fool John Q. Public into thinking it is real. There is plenty of prime real estate within the Nest for the wonder box, but the best spot for it is obvious. Rip The Ubyssey’s office to shreds. Clearing out the nosy newshounds will stop them from publishing an exposé on the wonder box, giving you all the leeway necessary to trick the “voters.” Once you knock out that pesky voting, the only thing that can drag you kicking and screaming from public office is the Grim Reaper’s Sickle.
