Paper and Pencil
No, I don't want to download the app. The folly of technology has rendered life, and elections, a tragicomedy.
In my local pub, the march of progress continues its pitiful pointless pace.
Rather than subject oneself to the iniquity of walking up to the bar and telling a warm-blooded creature you’d like a pint of Doom Bar and a Jameson’s, one can now reject such outmoded nonsense.
You can now shuffle through the pub doors, plant yourself in a quiet corner, pull out your smartphone, and order all and sundry through the app. Just a few taps of the thumb and the grog arrives at one’s table. Not a word uttered.
Of course, we are not that advanced. A human being still draws the pint. A human being still puts too much ice in the Jameson’s. A human being still waddles over to one’s table. A human being still offers what some dignify as small talk. ‘Raining out?’ No, mate. There’s another reason I am sitting here soaked through to my boxer shorts. You see, I shower in my clothes. Such ingenuity saves on detergent. Inflation! And, of course, I’m utterly mental. But you knew that.
Sadly, human beings with preciously pink lungs still populate the pub. No smoking. Studies have shown, you see, that smoking isn’t too good for you. And that ‘second-hand smoke’ is the vilest concoction since Agent Orange. Studies with more holes than a sieve ponced that little pleasure. It’s been fifteen years. I’m not bitter. I digress.
Apparently, all this technology is evidence of the unrelenting advancement of enlightened beings. For decades, you see, ordering a pint at a bar was an exercise of the Socratic method, impregnable to all but shamans and savants.
Has shunting human interactions behind a screen saved us from the horrible inclemency of life? Perhaps we’re all too busy ‘building our brand’ and ‘networking’ and scrolling through nonsense to talk to real people.
If anything, this pointless sanitization of everyday humanity is the technological vanity of a species without cultural achievement since the turn of the century.
We now have apps for apps. Go to a restaurant. Ask for a menu. The waiter will laugh you out of town. A menu? How quaint. Instead of reading a paper menu, one must join the ever-advancing arc of history and point one’s phone camera at a logo. What happens? Magicked into existence is a menu. On your phone. It’s all so terribly modern.
Some things work fine without a touchscreen. Ordering a pint is one of them. Voting for a president or a prime minister is another.
When it comes to elections, we British are the oldest of the old school. We shuffle into a voting station, draw a musty curtain, mark with a pencil an ‘X’ on a piece of paper, and we place that paper into a box. Those boxes are then shipped to other human beings, who, watched by yet more human beings, count the ballots by hand.
For centuries, this system has worked and continues to work. By the early hours, or by the third bottle of wine, we smug Brits know who’ll be in power.
There’s little disputation. No reasonable rancour. There’s no talk of hacked voting machines, or of outdated software. No suspicious injections of votes. No dissolution of seemingly unassailable leads. It’s all rather staid.
This passé system has its advantages. For one, half the nation isn’t convinced the election was stolen from them. All of this idyll is made possible by the communion of lead pencil, paper ballot, human eye.
I’m reminded of this simplicity after watching Americans take the best part of a week to count ballots and announce the winners of the midterms. From election night, we’ve birthed election month.
For all the recent waffle of ‘democracy is at stake,’ it appears American elections are set up to encourage suspicion, cloud reason, and pique anger. In Maricopa County, Arizona, voting machines malfunctioned on the day. Cue the predictable and totally understandable cries of ‘rigged!’
No doubt, Stacey Abrams’ latest expensive loss will too invite projections of unreality. Ms. Abrams has claimed for years now her loss in Georgia was down to skulduggery. As T.S. Eliot wrote, ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality.’
No, I’m not suggesting fraud. Nor am I going Kanye. Neither am I blaming shapeshifting lizards or whatever some improperly medicated soothsayer says on YouTube. (It is plainly obvious why Republicans failed to take advantage of Biden’s woeful approval ratings, rampant inflation, and the general state of the country. Lose independents: lose the race.)
The modern advent of mass mail-in ballots, early voting, and the rest of it has rendered elections a circus of distrust and suspicion.
Americans used to mark an X on a piece of paper. A few hours later, they’d know the winner of the election. The losing team would accept that the other team won this round.
That is how democracy works. Without trust in the results, without faith in the system, without the peaceful transfer of power, democracy doesn’t work.
Let’s place ourselves in the shoes of the losers: an opaque and puzzling system which the winners put into place seems to ensure the winners win no matter what and no matter how unfavourable the conditions. Adding to the confusion, one-third of Americans now vote much before voting day, rendering voting day pointless. Mail-in ballots now scoop up millions of voters who never would have voted and who probably couldn’t tell you who was running.
No, it’s not illegal. And neither is it cheating. But is it ethical? Is it ‘strengthening democracy’? Given that forty percent of Americans still meet the Biden presidency with an eyeroll and an asterisk, I’d say no.
The argument that this system ‘strengthens democracy’ is a watery one. When accosted by someone with a clipboard, I’ve often signed whatever it is they were collecting signatures for if only for them to leave me alone. Does this mean I signed with conviction? For all I know, I signed up in support of a death sentence for smokers.
Don’t forget. When Trump squeezed out the slimmest of wins in 2016, the other team cried foul and too demented themselves with claims of fraud, Russian agents, rigged machines, and variegated fantasies. For years, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow teased her swollen audience with claims of Russian interference and glorified conspiracy theories. One tribe’s nutter is another tribe’s prophet.
In cycling, one can gain an unnatural advantage by doping the blood with EPO. This is illegal. It’s cheating. Alas, one can also sleep in a high-altitude chamber to naturally maximise one’s red blood cell count. The former is cheating. The latter is not. But ask the guy who came second whether it’s ethical. He’ll say no. Ask him again once he’s doped his own blood and pushed his way into first place. He’ll say yes.
In a sane country, both sides would acknowledge that such chaos is cancerous to democracy.
Of course, that won’t happen until the other team gets a taste of their own medicine.
Republicans are now planning a vote-doping programme of their own. What happens next? The question is rhetorical. We know what happens next. None of it pretty. Much of it funny.
In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the Big Endians wage war with the Little Endians. The source of their rancour? Both sides claim to know the best way to crack an egg. The Big Endians claim the big end is best. The Little Endians, obviously, claim the little end is best.
How irrational! And yet, the next election will resemble Gulliver’s Travels. Both sides will claim only their mail-in ballots are the real mail-in ballots.
Easily avoidable was this modern nonsense: Vote in person, on one day, with a pencil and a piece of paper. It works.
Now, if I could just work out how to order a pint on this bloody modern app.
Yes, oh, yes.
And perhaps uniquely to the US given its span of time zones, NO reporting of voting results until all of the polls closed. "Hi, California? This is New York. We have a problem..."
I have come to hate technology. The ability to read is wonderful, its everyelse I hate. I see people in that screen all day.
It is their life.