Fact checking

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake Harmon Seaver (hseaver at cybershamanix.com) [27/04/04 17:18]:
:    All of the above, but mostly door-to-door voter registration. When you
: consider that both klinton and dubbya were elected with only 13%-14% of the
: eligible voters, it wouldn't take all that many new voters to really make a
: difference.

"Hi, Sir, my name is Bob and I'm here to educate you about all the
candidates in the upcoming election that your eight second attention span
will allow me.  Oops, I guess I've used it all up.  Bye now!"

These things all work in theory, but never in practice.

Why bother putting something up in a library?  Chances are, if someone's
reading it there, they're already somewhat knowledgable about the
candidates.  Or heck, maybe they're even there to do /research/ on them!

Grocery store posters?  When was the last time you stopped to read one of
those?

Radio ads?  What group of volunteers would have the dough to cough up enough
to get a spot on a semi-popular radio station?  One that's unbiased enough
to /let/ you play a spot like what you'd want to play?

I don't see any way to educate the mass public.  The best option I've seen
was when a couple of Canadians, frustrated at the options, started eating
their ballots.  They got arrested a few times, but I think the charges were
dropped.  At least that caught /some/ attention.

The more shocking it is, the more attention it will grab, the more effect it
will have, however short-term it may be.  And the more I think of swapping
crack for cracked votes, the more I like it.