In the tiniest part of the spiral Galaxy I live in, people's fervor towards certain rituals is unregulated and spontaneous, mostly because "freedom", so everyone has an opinion (mostly the same as a lot of others, but NEVER call them sheeple) and the sanctimonious impetus they have when sharing it is deafening at times.
Just like astrology, finding the best political candidate takes a lot of guesswork (it really shouldn't but you would not be able to see this from the way some people react and apply their feelings into what, should be a mathematical postulate at times (not always though).
So, from my limited stay on this here third rock, I have come to identify various ways in which people choose a candidate of their liking:
- Hereditary, these are the people that just vote for whoever their parent's taught them to vote
- Utterly and illogically biased, these are those that have no clue who to vote for, yet decide to exercise the right to select the next president of the country based on "he's cute", "she's a woman", "he's the one with the TV show" etc.
- Gut feeling, having never really studied politics, these wondrous and adventurous individuals just trust their gut "feels right" is something you hear a lot here
- Self identification, the candidate reminds me of something I once liked in the past and I'll just go with that
- Scholarly voters are pretty much people that DO NOT adhere to a single party, but will study, review, understand and SELECT the choice that best applies to what they believe the future of the country should be
There may be one or two more categories, but I feel those above cover most of what I've seen.
People in Latin America like a 'people' person, we're very outgoing (mostly), talkative (sometimes), grounded (this is really being eroded lately) and having someone that feels like he's "people" and not just a figure head is what a lot of the citizens want.
So, it's not surprising when two days ago, a lot of the opinions towards the selection of the next president seems to be based off knowing or not, how much groceries cost in the open market.
I read a story once, Assimov's "The Franchise". In the FAR FAR away future of 2008, indirect voting was taken to the extreme, you had a "Voter of the Year", and ONE person decided who the president would be.
From Wikipedia:
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
I left those links there in case anyone wants to learn more about democracy and elections.
The funny part is, the actual questions that Norman Answers, have to do with cost of food, cost of living, and stuff like that, but the this one stuck to me pretty solidly, as it was well, here's the line from the book:
"The one question Norman could remember at the moment was an incongruously gossipy: "What do you think of the price of eggs?""
That's precisely what a lot of people are basing decisions on, if a candidate knew or not the price of groceries.
There being millions of factors you could abide by to choose a person to lead the country, the biggest news now, is basically Gossip.
I am not defending the ignorance of any particular candidate (most didn't know and one decided NOT to answer a single question), but seriously? This is what a lot of people want for our country's future?
We have, at the moment a female president and NO ONE is asking out there why there are no female candidates at this point.
We do have a younger candidate, among the miriad of rehashed past hopefuls, and one or two newcomers that were dropped into the position after a circus fanfare to rival Roman Coliseums shows.
But we really are not looking for a proper president, we seem to be looking for whether or not he's "one of us".
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