political prediction

[zdover]

The independent, non-Machine-affiliated candidate Kendra Key will lose the 2009 University of Alabama SGA Presidential election.

Comments

[diamondduste]

I think the vote totals will be closer than people are thinking. While the Greeks can vote in the comfort of their own homes, they can no longer do the line-stacking trick of busing the entire house to polling stations, causing major long lines, and deterring people from voting due to the wait.

I also think Key has run the best independent campaign on campus in some time.

[grosely_clerx]

Why/how can't they bus people to polling stations any more?

[diamondduste]

There are no polling stations. All voting is online.

The Greek system used to employ as a strategy among other strategies the strategy of taking many people to the polling place to stand in line. The resulting long line implied to the mildly-interested potential voter that there would be a long waiting time before the mildly-interested voter's vote could be cast, and that would dissuade the mildly-interested voter, who would upon being so dissuaded become a non-voter. Was the strategy in play here, is the claim I think he's making.

[zdover]

If the hard-to-puzzle-out sentence structure didn't tell you that I was the one who posted the thing immediately above this, this message will tell you that I was the person who posted the thing with the hard-to-puzzle-out sentence structure.

[diamondduste]

Because the traditional polling stations shouldn't exist under the current set-up. If people are voting by MyBama from the comfort of their own computers, there is no need to set up polling stations at the Ferg or say the lobby of Reese Phifer. In the past, the line-stacking would happen in these places.