What If....

Today is election day here in US. Since I live in a democrat state, for the past 2 presidential/midterm election, have never seen a single banner or political speech of any sort. Everybody has written it off as democrate. only the local ballot measures make waves and news here.

I couldn't help wondering what will happen if some election related events/concepts seen in US were to reflect in elections back in my home country - INDIA -

• Phone canvassing - Here you get calls if you are an unregistered voter. In India, during the 2004 polls, the BJP party used unsolicited text messages (called SMS back home) to spam all the mobile users. No one can do a thing about it and we had to wait for BJP to give that tactic itself after all the negative response this act elicited.




• Absentee ballot and early voting - This would be classic. Guess what, with all the gundas and henchmen that politicians have, all you have to do to know the election results is to wait for the ballot papers to get printed. Once its printed, bham....your vote will be immediately cast for you as an absentee or early voter to the party that has the muzzle of power and money.




• Debates - This would actually do some good. Not only will the TVs get to telecast it directly as a full-fledged sit com, if you are lucky, the gundas of both sides may get into a tussle and can even do good to the nation by killing the other group's netha (leader).




• Ballot measures - For get it, already our ballots seem like tissue rolls with so many candidates with their symbols etc. We dont have space for anything else. BTW, when did we get that much involved in civic and local matters so that we demanded a ballot measure on anything. We are indians for pete sake !!!
  

This post's picture was taken with D40 at Seattle Downtown area. It has no relevance to this post except for the fact the wooden pole shown is of "American Indian" heritage while the post is concerned with "Indian Indian" :-)