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July 9, 2019 |
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Commentary for July 9, 2019: Some of you may be wondering how the heck anyone can be elected President with only 35 percent of the vote. That’s a very good question. However, that is exactly what can happen in a first-past-the-post (or winner-takes-all) system. Pretty broken, isn’t it, when the person who most people voted against can actually win? Of course, in places like the United States, you rarely get such an even split between three presidential candidates due to the two-party system there, which basically guarantees that the winner will either be a Republican or a Democrat. Sure, other parties field candidates, but it’s monumentally unlikely they’ll win or even get more than one percent of the vote, if that. But if a third party did become popular enough to break that duopoly, this kind of split would become not only possible, but likely. Moreover, I am also channelling British politics, to a large degree here, where there are more than two parties that get a sizeable chunk of the vote at each election. When I was first writing Eon’s Comic, there were three major parties in the UK (four if you were Scotland or Wales), and it feels like there are even more today. But even though there are several parties to choose from, most of our elections are still decided in a pretty broken and mathematically unfair first-past-the-post system that tends to favour one of two parties. And that was true in the fiction here, too. Prior to this election, only the Social Democrats and the Conservatives really had a shot. The Progressives have upset that balance. But, going from the third party to the winning party (at least where the presidency is concerned), Samanfur the Fox was never going to win by a landslide. But, since it’s winner-takes-all, she has won. Would she have won under a different system, like a two-rounds system, proportional representation, alternative vote, or single transferable vote? Well, as the author and therefore god of Eon’s World, I’m going to say that, yes, she would have, and possibly by a greater margin depending on the system. Anyway, another chapter down. This story corresponds with Eon's Comic #10, which was just called ‘Election Day’. Since we already looked in on the election campaign and I covered the differences between the original and Eon's World Vol. 1 there, I won’t bother repeating myself here. What I will say, however, is that this story arc (including Chapter 5), has basically established the status quo that was originally in place at the start of Eon’s Comic (or, what would at least be later established to be the case), which is that Samanfur the Fox is the leader of Earth’s government. Finally, if you’re getting a sinister vibe off of Mortimer, good. It’s intentional. |
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Eon's World is a fan comic created by Bethany Turner. All characters are copyright
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