WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – The President today signed into law the United States Electoral Legislative-Executive Sensible Simplification (USELESS) bill, passed last week by large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Present at the signing were not only leaders of Congress but also several members of the Supreme Court – a recognition that the Useless Act is intended to bring the country’s electoral legislation into closer conformity with recent Court decisions.
As the Speaker, Stoneage Bomber, said in introducing the bill to the House of Representatives, “You may like or dislike the Supreme Court rulings, but we are a nation of laws, at least when anyone is watching. The Court has ruled that, under our Constitution, corporations are people, and money is free speech. This Bill merely recognizes and codifies the fact that the Court’s rulings have made our previous electoral procedures outdated.”
Under the Act, in all polling stations, ballot boxes will be replaced by large sealed containers, one for each candidate, with a slot in the top for the insertion of currency or bank checks.
Polling stations will be open for the reception of deposits for at least six months before the election date. Voters can enter at any time during normal office hours and drop money in the slot for their favored candidate. Absentee voting will be possible via electronic funds transfer, a method that is expected to be used especially by corporations, who are usually too busy to travel to a polling station.
Once the vaults close on election day, a team of bankers will total the donations and declare as the winner the candidate who has received the most free speech support (money).
“This law,” said Senate Majority Leader Harvey Pooka, “will be of considerable benefit to ordinary Americans. They will no longer have to stand in long lines on voting day, wasting their time under the illusion that their opinion of the candidates is of some importance. They can put their money where their mouth is.”
There are still some details of the new electoral procedure to be finalized. For example, while checks and electronic fund transfers make it easy to identify donors so that candidates know who they are grateful to, cash deposited at polling stations might be anonymous unless the donor remembers to put it in an envelope with his/her name on it.
And it is yet to be determined how voting will be treated for tax purposes. Corporations and wealthy voters would presumably regard their votes as investments. But the less wealthy voter, who can only afford a $50 or $100 vote, might feel disinclined to vote unless there was an incentive such as a tax deduction for doing so. The American Reactionary Expansion Council, the original author of the Useless Act, has proposed that a minimum $50 vote be made compulsory “to ensure that all Americans participate in choosing their government.”
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