I Voted!

Grand Moff Hissa · #1

((Juliette Sargent continued from Juliette Sargent For Senior Class President by way of Presidential Election Speeches))

Juliette was casting her own vote, of course. She'd been tempted to fill out her ballot in advance, but at the same time that would've felt disrespectful, presumptuous. Appearances mattered, and Juliette did not want to look like she didn't care about the vice-presidential election, even if she had a fairly clear idea who she was backing before a word was said.

The speeches did nothing to change her mind. There was a lot of talk from the candidates about what they would or would not do with school funding, which played well to the crowds even if it didn't have much basis in reality. Faith and Julien landed closer than they would've probably preferred, platform-wise, which brought a little smile to Juliette's face. That was well-played on Faith's side, a pretty classic blindside, and Juliette wondered if it had been improvisation, research, or serendipity.

Really, any of the candidates would be fine, but the speeches just solidified Juliette's initial preference.

Claudeson Bademosi made cooperation with the president a central part of his campaign. True, that could be no more than pretty words, but it was more than either of the others offered. More than that, his core campaign wasn't built around a negative, while the others talked a lot about not doing something. Claudeson stood on his reputation, and while Juliette thought that was a remarkably poor and shortsighted strategy, it was also one that worked on those who actually were aware of that reputation, a group she numbered herself among.

And there were worse things than a vice president lacking in guile.

If she won, Claudeson would be a good right-hand man, and if she lost he would still serve admirably in the office. So she wrote down the name she would've picked had she voted before arriving.

Senior Vice President: Claudeson Bademosi

Still, she didn't regret her decorum. Appearances mattered.

And when it came to the main event, of course, things were even clearer.

Senior President: Juliette Sargent

The magnanimous gesture would've been to vote for somebody else, but being magnanimous didn't get you elected. Every vote mattered, and as she'd said on stage, she thought herself best qualified. Confidence was not arrogance.

She'd done well, she thought. Her speech had been last, and she'd kept it brief, in part as a reaction to Joey's overplaying his hand. She hadn't read from a paper. She hadn't even brought cue cards. She hadn't stumbled like Lucas, and she'd gotten across exactly what she'd intended. And, she thought, her platform had held a certain sincerity that some of the other candidates had lacked; if perfecting Prom was easy it wouldn't have to be dangled as an election prize full of secret plans only to be revealed later. Compared to that, a commitment to listening was positively grounded.

But this was an age for surprises, and the crowded field here put a jungle primary to shame. It was too bad they couldn't have a run-off to deal with an inevitably split vote producing an inevitably minority-support winner.

Juliette had, at least, figured out what one of her first acts if elected would be. The crowd had seemed delighted by Nathan's speech and attempt, and she thought that the school administration and the rest of the council would be quite amenable to her coming up with an honorary position like Secretary of School Spirit or Secretary of Happiness or something like that to offer the boy, to let him be a real part of things and show him support.

So she stood and smiled, full of anticipation but for once as calm inside as she appeared. All that was left was to wait for the count to come in.

((Juliette Sargent continued in Concession Call))

((Alton Gerow continued from I Went To Hell And To The Races))

Alton was even less bothered by school politics than he was actual politics. He was here because he hadn't seen the value in burning capital to get away with ditching something so comparatively brief and insignificant, and because he figured there was a shot at something entertaining happening during the proceedings.

What a disappointment on the last front.

The vice presidential speeches were mercifully succinct, and Alton had little trouble deciding where to place his vote.

Senior Vice President: Julien Leblanc

Julien's decision to run, as a general unknown, was fascinating to Alton. The boy seemed to have some real fire behind his push, yet what he favored was being aggressively apolitical. To get his platform enacted, however, he was willing to take the cheap shots, to get down and dirty to a greater degree than any other candidate. That, Alton thought, should be rewarded. It would at the very least make for the best chance of reaching a different state of affairs, a shake-up of a mundane and boring process.

The presidential speeches were a lot longer and a lot less interesting, with plenty of hollow promises and false bravado and posturing around popularity. Alton thought most of the candidates were incompetent, lying, power-tripping, or some combination thereof. It would be lovely to turn the school into a giant haunted house for a paintball fight, but it also would never happen. He'd bring what adventure he could to school, but only if it could be done without eating into his time for better adventures elsewhere.

One promise, though, he could trust.

Senior Class President: Juliette Sargent

Juliette would listen, he thought. To everyone, as she claimed, maybe not. But she would listen to him, and that was a resource that would probably go forever untapped but might be handy in a pinch. He could have her ear whenever he wanted it.

After all, he knew her stepsister.

((Alton Gerow continued elsewhere))

Senior Vice President: Claudeson Bademosi

Lavender's vote was no surprise to her. She had, in fact, filled it in as soon as she sat down, before the boy even began his speech. In pencil, yes, because there was always room for the sudden turn, the horrible betrayal, but she needn't have worried. Claudeson was and remained the obvious choice.

Lavender believed in a moral obligation to vote. There was arguably room for protest votes in very specific situations, but when it came to elections with any degree of competitiveness that went out the window. You had to pitch in for the best candidate with a chance to win, however flawed they might be.

It was, she thought, pretty messed up that two of the three candidates running for political office were campaigning on avoiding politics. A sign of the times, of the way discourse had been poisoned, of the stultifying malaise sweeping the nation as a whole, leaving so many who should know better ready to give up and roll over for Canon. People weer sick of fighting, and now they just wanted to hide. Well, not Lavender.

If only the class presidential election had been nearly so clean a decision.

Lavender had been a little bit concerned, as the first students gave their speeches, that she might actually have to vote for Juliette, a prospect that made gritting her teeth and getting behind Connie Massey appealing by comparison. Lavender was on the student council too. She knew what others stood for, or, more pertinently, didn't. She wasn't about to support someone who treated the position as a joke, a simple stepping-stone, or a platform to spew vile or trivial views, but Juliette's empty jar was scant improvement.

Fortunately, someone was there to save the day, and as Juliette's hollow speech faded Lavender finished the careful inscription of her vote.

Senior Class President: Ashlynn Martinek

Ashlynn was flawed too. Lavender liked her, but thought her temperament not quite right for the job. If that was her biggest complaint, though, or even second or third place, that put Ashlynn miles ahead of everyone else. Ashlynn had laid out her allegiances, had made a stand, and obviously held beliefs. That was, at least, something.

Very, very faintly, Lavender found herself wishing she'd given a bit more thought to running herself.

((Lavender Ripley continued in Tell Us How You Really Feel))

((Phillip Olivares continued from All In The Telling))

So this whole election thing was some bullshit, Phillip thought, like there were circuses and he liked most of them but not this one, get some elephants or fire-breathers or something in here rather than this dismal nonsense that nobody cared about and that would accomplish nothing of any material value.

Did anyone really even give a little bit of a shit who was class vice president in high school? That sounded like the sort of thing that only came up in your obituary if you died tragically young, like "He may have driven his car off a cliff while blasted on meth but he was such a nice boy until he joined that fraternity, he was vice president of his class in high school."

Claudeson's campaign seemed to be about how people should know his deal and vote for him based on that, and Phillip didn't so fuck him. Julien's campaign was based on promising he'd do stuff differently than Claudeson and Faith, and then Faith came and promised exactly the same thing, so that was Julien already having been wrong once and that was a good enough arbitrary metric for Phillip to make up his mind.

Senior Vice President: Faith

He couldn't remember how to spell her last name but that got the point across, right?

The presidential speeches were way way longer. Phillip felt kind of bad about the circus comparison earlier because they dragged that kid with Downs or whatever up and had him read off a sheet of paper and that seemed like a real dick move for absolutely everyone, it was like going "Hey, look at the freak!" to everyone in the class who wasn't cool with that sort of thing and would shove him in lockers or whatever, and it was like going "Here is exactly how little of a shit the rest of the world gives about you and this position," to the poor suckers who'd actually tried with their speeches. Bad vibes all around, and Phillip wished he could forget about it.

The promises about a cool Prom sounded cool, and there was a bunch of political stuff that meant nothing, but Phillip's attention and vote were inexorably drawn—as if magnetically, miraculously—towards the one guy who seemed as aware of the colossal farce of the whole event as he was.

Senior Class President: Ross Miller

If you vote for the guy who promises nothing, how can you be disappointed?

And besides, everyone knew that true wisdom resided in the fool.

((Phillip Olivares continued in We Who Are About To Die))

((Continued from If I'm going to have a past...))

Sven was miserable. He wasn't supposed to be here. This was not his class. He didn't know anyone, didn't care. Had he cared about elections in his year, with his friends? It was hard to remember just now, but he thought he'd held a sort of neutral apathy as opposed to the anguished one of present.

Who was this Claudeson guy? He seemed to be someone others would know, someone they might think would be good or bad for the position, but Sven had no clue. Julien, Julien he was... he was aware of Julien. Julien made him a little uncomfortable still. Sven was not voting for Julien.

Well, that was a decision made, was it not?

Senior Vice President: Faith Marshal-Mackenzie

There were so many presidential candidates, all lined up, and Sven was tuning them out until they got the boy with DNS up and people seemed to be reacting positively and Sven looked over and was pretty sure this guy a few rows in front of him was voting for the guy right then and there, and it was like someone had hurled a cinder block through the fragile windowpane of reality and now the gaping void was screaming all around, sucking the sound out of the room, his classmates replaced by Muppets, the bleachers and the stage by cheap plywood props, the spotlights intensified and he could almost step back through the screen to watch, and he thought Jesus Christ no, please no, this can't happen, this is Napoleon Dynamite, I hate Napoleon Dynamite, I think I'd rather actually die than live in Napoleon Dynamite, and he looked around desperately, trying to spy on the ballots of everyone near him but people were starting to give him weird looks with their beady Muppet eyes more fake than his left and it was time to take some breaths, to find his center.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So Sven was going to go to the nurse's office and sit for a few minutes when this was over, but before then he had a solemn duty to do whatever he could to beat back the howling fakeness, to take his destiny into his own hands. He had a vote, right? He could vote for this to be real life. Maybe other people would too, reaching up to sever their strings. Maybe he was overreacting. He just had to pick whichever other candidate had the best chance of winning and then vote for them.

...Sven didn't know the first thing about any of these people. He'd seen campaign posters for... for some of them, he thought. A girl? He thought he'd seen a lot of posters for a girl, like all year long.

Okay.

He'd think like, like a normal high school student, because that was what this school was supposed to be peopled by, right? Sven couldn't remember what normal high school students liked, and he just didn't know anyone on the stage, but a word had stuck out from the haze earlier, and he clung to it for salvation, counted his way backwards up the list and told himself that yeah, it'd been the very first speech, and hoped his counting was right, hoped his read was right.

Prom. A better Prom. They had to vote for that, right? Everything else was lofty, subjective, byzantine. Everyone understood Prom.

Sven didn't understand Prom at all.

Senior Class President: Alison Bernheisel

He was itching to leave, and the people around him seemed to have lost interest but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much of anything.

((Continued in Make A New Cult Every Day))

Misty was ready for this, ready to go, armed with her ideals and her having done some actual legwork on the candidates. She knew who was right and who was Right and she had a pretty good idea who'd be BSing to try to trick the inattentive. She could've scribbled out her votes right at the start and probably nothing would've changed.

The vice presidential speeches came and went and sure enough nothing did change. Julien and Faith had about the same platform. Julien might've actually meant it, which was better than nothing but not better than Faith.

Senior Vice President: Faith Marshal-Mackenzie

Misty knew Faith. Faith was a good person, dedicated, smart, focused, caring, exactly the perfect one to hold the position and Misty's only complaint was that Faith wasn't ambitious enough, because she should've been gunning for the top seat.

On which note, as the speeches progressed, Misty found herself grimacing. She... really wanted to support Lucas. Lucas was also a good person with good ideas, competence and a subtlety that, yeah, could occasionally be a bit spineless but still he was by far the best of the bunch. But that speech. Ouch. He was all over the place, and he hadn't carried himself well, and with the right charisma that wouldn't be an issue but Lucas didn't have the right charisma. He was no Canon prowling the stage and working the voters who truly mattered. He was a boy in a sweaty white shirt and a tie. His look screamed young Republican, but not in the good way.

But most everyone else sucked. Ashlynn called herself a liberal and then spun semantics to try to walk it back but she'd shown her true colors and Misty was aware of them anyways. Alison had just a hint of virtue signaling hidden in her spiel, thinking she was so subtle with that "ally" line, and her ideas were impractical and outside of the stuff Misty cared about. Ross wasn't reliable though the cursing endeared him some, but Misty had some other little reservations there. Joey was so far up his own ass it'd take some long-handled pliers to fish him out. Nathan was literally retarded.

Juliette's speech, Misty liked, but she wasn't so sure she could trust it. It hit the right notes, promised openness and acceptance of everyone, and Misty was an everyone who didn't always feel particularly accepted or heard. But how would that shake out in practice? If Misty walked up to her and was like, "Hey, I think boys should only use the boys' bathroom," would that get brought up to the council and Principal Cromwell, or would there be a lot of concerned noises and then fifty liberal kids shouting her down so the only difference was she got to pretend she'd been listened to?

Goddammit, Lucas would listen, she knew it, but did he have a chance? He played coy sometimes, so would the others who shared their views know to unite behind him? The field was crowded enough he could slip through even with a bad speech if they did.

Senior Class President: Lucas Brady

Misty had doubted Canon, before the results started rolling in. The least she could do was give Lucas a shot, cross her fingers and whisper some magic words that he might pull it out.

((Misty Browder continued elsewhere))