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-- OriginalOwner_ [ttp:] writes:

from the good-luck-with-that dept.

Four-term US Senator for California Barbara Boxer is not running for re-election. There are 34 candidates who want the job. In the Secretary of State's pre-election mailer, candidates can try once more to get voters to like them--for $25/word. Among them is engineer[1] Jason Hanania.

El Reg reports [theregister.co.uk]

...whose entire [message] comprises: 01100101.

Why? Because, as Hanania explains [jasonhanania.com] on his own website, "01100101" is binary for decimal 101, which is the ASCII code for the letter "e", which is short for "e-voting candidate", which is how he describes himself.

What's an e-voting candidate? Well, according to Hanania's vision, it is one that directly follows the wishes of his or her constituents through online votes, regardless of his or her personal views.

His system, which he outlines in a 33-minute video [youtube.com], will allow decisions in the United States to move "from the 1 per cent to the 100 per cent" by giving everyone a direct vote on matters in front of the US Senate.

He's wrong, of course. The system would fall apart within minutes, but he seems genuinely persuaded in the way that only a patent engineer could imagine a theoretical solution would work in the messy world of real people.

TFA goes into some detail on how California state election rules and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) pull in opposing directions, as do a wish to balance a democratic right to run for office while avoiding cheap corporate advertising.

[1] He is clearly an engineer who doesn't check his work. [w3.org]

Orange County political forum Orange Juice Blog notes that the statements of candidates [orangejuiceblog.com] reveal points about them such as that some don't know where to get help with things e.g. verifying that their English-language statements don't read like gibberish.

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