Unfortunately it is rarely the case that you pull the lever on a candidate and think wow this person is the perfect moral candidate. Unfortunately in are present system when you vote for someone there is no really good public way to mark your displeasure or that you are voting for them with reservations.
I do have a solution though for this problem. When you read message boards and some blogs you can see the use of emoticons for people to be able to mark the related emotion to what they are saying.
With the advent of so many LCD touch screens in the voting booth just how hard would it be to able to add emoticons with each of your votes? When the emoticons are tabulated politicians would see exactly what you really think of them. Right now a vote appears to them to be an 100 percent vote of approval. It would be great for their humility to get a 80 percent “yawning” and a 10 percent “grossed out’ along with other ratings.
Though the standard emoticons are really not expressive enough. I suggest a new category for voting machines – Voticons. Here are some possible Voticons.
Holding my nose while voting for you
You were the lesser of two devils
After voting for you I think I am gonna spew
I am embarrassed to have voted for you but you sucked less than the other person.
I voted pro-life, please don’t disappoint me.
Used for politicians where you are “split” between liking him one day and hating him the next.
Remember this is my wallet not yours, please vote accordingly.
I am only voting for you because ‘better the devil you know than the devil you don’t’
I suspect that you will not rob me like a pirate as much as the other guy.
I vote pro-life and you are less murderous than the other guy.
Now in some situations I guess you could actually use one of the normal smiley emoticons, but this seems rather theoretical to me.
And here is one last one:
“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” G.K. Chesterton
What are your ideas for Voticons?
3 comments
How about a vote of no confidence? It would subtract 1/2 vote from each candidate. The candidate with the lowest negative number wins. 😉
Your idea is clever but is designed to give feedback only to the candidate. How about a “voticon” of a ghost (for those votes which are “cemetery votes”), a voticon with a $ (for votes cast only because of “walk around money” which paid someone to cast a ballot), voticons indicating +1, +2, +3 or even +4 (to indicate the number of times the voter had cast a ballot for this candidate)?
As we are not required to have voter I.D. nor to show any form of identification, these designations would/could either drive local State Election Boards nuts or allow them to swell their collective chests with pride (as the case may be in some areas) !
;-o)
D.v.
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