Bedrock 2: Adventures at the Board of Elections

Today, we’ll continue our illustrative story of elections — and as in the first installment of the story, we’ll keep it simple with the setting in the Town of Bedrock. As we tune in, we find Fred Flintstone in downtown Bedrock at the offices of Cobblestone County’s Bedrock Board of Elections (BBoE). He’s checking up on the rumor that Mayor Flint Eastrock has resigned, and that there is a Special Mayoral Election scheduled. Asking BBoE staffer Rocky Stonerman, Rocky replies, “Of course Fred! Just check the BBoE’s public slab-site.” Going back outside the BBoE offices, he checks the public slab-site, and sure enough there is a newly posted slab announcing the election.

Fred tells Rocky he’d like to run, and Rocky explains how Fred needs to apply as a candidate, and what the eligibility rules are. “Fred, I’ll tell you straight up, don’t bother to fill out the application, you’re not eligible because you’re a Quarry Commissioner. If you want to run for Mayor, you’ll need to resign first, and then apply as a mayoral candidate.”

“Yabba dabba doo – that’s what I’m here to do!” Forms and formalities of resignation then taken care of, Rocky gives Fred an application slab and chisel, and then grabs a chisel and runs out to update the Upcoming Elections slab page to include information about the contest for Quarry Commission, Seat #2. In the meantime, Fred has finished his application, and hands it in when Rocky returns. “Did you put me on the candidate list?”

“Of course not, Fred. We have to process your application! Best bet is to come down tomorrow — I’m going to have to pull your voter record from our voter record tablet-base system. And I’ve got to tell you, it’ll take a while — the VRTB has thousands of records. We’re still running on unsupported old ScryBase system! Wish we had funding to upgrade but not so far. Petro tells me the we should look at an open-stone MyScryql system, and …”

Not so interested in Rocky and Petro’s slabs and tablets, Fred interrupts, “And what about that referendum?” Rocky replies, “Oh yes! The Quarry Courier brought over an application yesterday, but it didn’t have all the commissioners’ signatures on the application. You probably want to get the commission to fix that — unless you want to go the petition route, though you’d need 300 signatures and frankly I don’t know if our TBMS has room, because …”

Having heard more than enough about stone-age election technology for one day, Fred beats a hasty retreat. Tune in for the next installment, to find out if Fred actually gets to run for mayor.

— EJS