The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Thirty Two

May the 3rd.

Polling day; mid-evening. From this momentous day forth we're supposed to resume a semblence of the lives we had a decade ago; but with some 'minor' changes.

Earlier I cast my ballot on one of the touch screen electronic voting machines before taking the bus into town. The were plans to make voting compulsory but the Electoral Commission decided against it; probably because leaving the issue to an individual's choice would help the Connies. They will of course go and do their civic duty as well as encouraging their sympathisers to do the same; such participation on the part of our opponents will be just another hurdle the NRP will have to overcome, and most likely trip over.

Beyond the closure for the day of those parts of the schools and public buildings given over to be polling stations there are few signs an election is being held. The official signs outside the polls, written in that same unchanged for decades large lettered font, remain as they always have been; but apart from that all is new. No longer will the traditional representatives of the old parties who used to count people as they entered or left the polling room be found camped outside; they have been prohibited from besetting the polls, rendered as obsolete by the new modernity as the battered old ballot boxes. Instead the parties will be updated as to which voters have cast their ballots - but not for who - in real time.

This being a far more streamlined process the results should begin to come through shortly after the polls close at 22.00. I imagine all those millions of votes being stored on the machines' hard chips suddenly migrating en-masse when they are transported to the counting centres and downloaded. That tradition has survived at least, thanks to the fear of the Black Dragon corrupting a more open network; though the virtual emptying of the electronic ballot boxes and counting of the digital votes should be much faster than the labourious hand counts of old.

Also gone is the election night drama. Anyone who believes that the NRP can somehow gather enough of a late surge of momentum to overturn the Consensus Party's advantage is deluding themselves: Once shrouded in the privacy of the voting booth the years of propaganda and those old prejudices are bound to come to the fore again; and though it is obviously against peoples' own self-interest to vote for the Consensus, that is exactly what the lemmings will duly go and do.

By this time tomorrow we'll know what the new lie of the political landscape is; and how far the new Consensus goverment will choose to push its mandate. My guess is as soon as Lois Merck has installed herself in Downing Street she'll leap straight into delivering everything she promised, and then more, as quickly as possible. If we thought we'd seen things we'd never have thought possible happen in the last few years, I think our senses will be sent reeling still further by what the new government will do. God help us all.

That's probably why I'm swamped by a wave of dejection as the countdown to the end of polling approaches. Despite being involved in producing the election 'cast tonight, I've still got plenty of time for introspective moping. The team running The South Decides can look after themselves and the low level media speakers the various parties have put up to comment on the events of the evening as they unfold. I'm in place only to provide remote supervisory guidance from our office in Portsmouth to the bigger studio complex in Southampton if required, and I doubt if it will be. Despite our recent history of civil war our elections are still held under Queensbury rules of gentility; in the new Fed the unpleasantness occurs largely out of sight... At the very worst it will be harsh words rather than punches thrown across the set tonight.

All day the news, produced under strict OMS and Electoral Commission guidelines, reports polling has been steady. A projected turnout of 80% or greater is expected. Following that lead story there are the inevitably airbrushed retrospective pieces about the Dissolution and its after effects. On the surface they appear to be impartial but Connie supporting journalists have become very adroit at getting their point across while making it seem otherwise; a loaded word here, a nuance there... Apart from that the news today is dominated by the latest outbreak in fighting between the Israeli and Palestinian enclaves. Despite permnent UN peacekeeping forces being deployed there, both sides can't pass up any opportunity to add to the death and destruction the region has already suffered, and maybe grab another few square kilometres of tolerably radioactive land for themselves; and so the tragic history continues. This also is subliminal propganda; contrasting the continuing aftermath of the Crises in the rest of the world with the relative stability the Council claims to have brought to the Federation.