Posts tagged "election"
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“I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, ‘If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,’ but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.”
Election rhetorics.
This case is not an exception but rather the rule of things going on. It's just that the absurdity of this situation is too obvious to ignore while others are too subtle to notice or outglared by distractions. Read on…
Picoaza, Ecuador is a relatively small village near the country’s Pacific coast. With a current population of nearly 20,000, it is the site of an archaeological treasure: a settlement dating back before the time of Christopher Columbus. It is also a rather poor area, with items such as clean drinking water, sewer systems, and telephone service — things that many of us often take for granted — inadequate at best.
It is also probably the only town in the known world to elect, as its mayor, a brand of foot powder.
As is often the case during election season, candidates advertise — a lot. If a candidate can find a way to get their name and/or message in front of a voter, they will. And because of this, the amount of this type of advertising during campaign season makes one thing abundantly clear to even the most oblivious passerby: an election is coming.
In 1967, the people of Picoaza voted for mayor. A foot powder company decided to ride this publicity wave to their own benefit, with an ad campaign of their own, promoting their product, Pulvapies. Leading up to election day, their message, translated, was non-partisan and straightforward: “Vote for any candidate, but if you want well-being and hygiene, vote for Pulvapies.” The night before the election, they distributed leaflets which were more to the point: “For Mayor: Honorable Pulvapies.”
The campaign worked — in one sense, at least. While we do not know if sales of Pulvapies increased, we do know that write-in ballots voting for the product did. Pulvapies received enough write-in votes to win the election. What happened afterward is unknown in the English-speaking world — as Snopes notes, no English-language media outlets followed up on how Picoaza resolved the obvious problem of having foot deodorant as the executive-in-chief.
Source: Now you know newsletter
