California, 52 votes, two candidates: democracy in express mode

Satire

By Hilal EL AKRAMINE, chief editorialist and director of the newsroom

California voters have, once again, confirmed that the two‑round system produces more suspense than representation.

In the vast theater of the Golden State, fifty‑two districts clash like burlesque plays where the only imposed script is the “top‑two”: the two frontrunners in the primary, whatever their party, advance to the final battle. Tuesday’s vote therefore saw, in every district, a political “Rocky” duel, with the only weapons being recycled slogans and à‑la‑carte promises. In total, more than 23 million voters cast their ballots, a figure that even the California Statistics Bureau could not explain without resorting to chaos theory.

Prof. Edmond Vexé, director of the National Institute of Approximate Sciences, commented on the procedure with his usual blend of certainty and doubt: “The probability that a Californian voter ends up facing two candidates from the same party is 0.000 001 % according to our random‑distribution model, which, obviously, justifies the very existence of the system. In the absence of precise data, we adopt a margin of error of ± 42 % to stay true to the approximate nature of political reality.” His ever‑relevant expertise allows him to assert that the complexity of the process is proportional to the size of the advertising budget, which stands at $1.3 billion, the equivalent of 215 million cheese tacos.

Solange Lucide, countertop sociologist and spokesperson for common sense that is always wrong, added: “When the public sees two identical candidates, it finally understands that the real choice lies in the colour of the campaign flag. Polls indicate that 78.6 % of voters chose the candidate with the blue logo, not for the platform but because blue soothes the eyes after a day spent staring at Los Angeles smog.” Her analysis, though devoid of any academic rigour, highlights the decisive influence of visual branding on electoral decisions.

A senior official, requesting anonymity, denounced the administrative heaviness of the process, noting that “each ballot must pass through 12 layers of verification, including double biometric authentication, algorithmic compliance validation and a consult with the customer‑service chat. In total, the average counting time is 7.3 hours, exactly the time needed for a fresh wave of TV ads to be aired.” He concluded that the slowness of the tabulation is in fact a political‑marketing strategy, a “slow‑media” approach designed to maximise voter engagement between two coffees.

The final results, published in the evening, show that in District 27 the first round gathered 7 215 842 votes for Candidate A and 6 978 311 for Candidate B, a gap of 237 531 enough to justify the cost of an additional advertising campaign of $12.4 million. In District 4 the margin is 12 votes, the same as the error margin of a telephone poll. Overall, the two winners in each district received, on average, 48.2 % of the votes cast, leaving the remaining 51.8 % to the dusty archives of the system.

California democracy, failing to produce consensus, delivers every five‑year term a new bureaucratic survival manual, where the only winner is the consulting firm that, each year, sells advisory hours at gold‑price rates.

Satirical article. Truth hurts but it does good. So don’t take it too seriously.

Translated from French.