the watch of time

With the Canadian provincial and municipal elections earlier this year and recently, plus a major biennial election south of the border earlier this month, one cannot help wondering what can be done to make the process, impact, etc. more interesting…

• Play outtakes of candidate speeches over polling station loudspeakers to entertain those voting
• Have each candidate post a board with their top five campaign promises, with percentages of likely fulfillment, outside polling stations
• Provide free bags of topsoil and grass seed for voters willing to have campaign signs on their lawns
• Increase the speed of results by allowing scrutineers to start counting immediately as ballots fall through chutes on their side of the boxes
• Instead of listing candidates alphabetically, list them on the basis of the value of their letter scores in Scrabble
• Leave trails of snacks and beverages outside polling stations to entice voters to go in and vote
• Demonstrate how to ‘balance the books’, by placing them on the heads of the campaign workers with the most hair
• Increase overall commitments to being ‘green’, by freely offering huge batches of mixed yellow and blue paints with paintbrushes
• On election night, have cameras or Skype type connections in all locations showing candidates sweating out the election returns
• Have candidates put their guess on the exact number of votes they get, in an envelope the night before the vote, and give ‘The Guess is Right’ trophies to those who predict closest without exceeding their final tally