Referendumb

@Vera Mont I couldn't resist... With some help of ChatGPT.

It started with the first referendum. At least, that’s what I was told, though I can’t remember when it happened, or what it was even about. Something to do with quorums, I think. How many people needed to vote for a referendum to count. But here’s the problem: we needed to have a referendum to decide what the quorum should be, and we didn’t know if that referendum would meet the quorum requirement it was supposed to set.

It was confusing. I remember opening the ballot envelope and staring at it, trying to understand how I could vote on whether enough people needed to vote for a vote to count. It was like a snake eating its own tail, and I wasn’t the only one who was puzzled.

The more I tried to follow along, the more ridiculous it got. The ballot asked whether the quorum should be set at 50%, 60%, 75%—as if anyone even knew what that meant. They kept telling us it was to prevent the tyranny of the majority, but it felt more like the tyranny of bureaucracy. I voted anyway, figuring it was my duty, even though I wasn’t sure what my vote would accomplish.

Turns out, it didn’t matter. Not enough people voted, so the referendum didn’t meet its own quorum. Deadlock.

That’s when the next stage of insanity began. The whole quorum question got passed on to a subcommittee, which then needed to create a sub-sub-committee to evaluate whether the original referendum even required a second quorum to confirm its legitimacy. By this point, no one could agree on what the word “quorum” even meant anymore. The solution? Another vote, of course. Because how else could we figure it out?

But it didn’t stop there. No, the next step was even more convoluted: a referendum on whether the previous referendum, having set a quorum, should now establish rules for when referenda were actually required. But the impossibly high quorum was never met, leading, predictably, to another stalemate.

To break the stalemate, a fresh referendum was launched: Should citizens be obligated to vote in referenda? Of course, that was met with an immediate counter-referendum on whether one should be allowed to opt out of that vote. The debate about whether we were obligated to vote spiralled into a philosophical knot, with a group loudly proclaiming the sanctity of "Free-dumb"—my term, not theirs. They railed against the tyranny of mandatory engagement.

This naturally led to yet another referendum, this time on whether the freedom to abstain should extend to referenda that involved the right to abstain. We had entered an endless loop of civic indecision, where every vote led to more questions about whether or not we should even be voting in the first place.

At one point, I went to one of the Bureau of Referenda’s “town hall” meetings, to see if anyone had any real answers. The room was packed, and it was clear everyone had their own idea on how to fix this mess.

A well-dressed man stood up first, radiating confidence, his words flowing like a polished sales pitch. He had the kind of certainty that comes from believing you can apply the same solution to every problem, as long as that solution involves making money.

“Here’s the problem,” he said, pacing slightly as he addressed the room, “there’s no incentive. People don’t vote because they don’t get anything out of it. What we need is to make voting worth something. Think about it—what if we turned voting into an investment opportunity? You put in your vote, like a stock, and if your side wins, you get a return. It’s the simplest form of motivation: personal gain. No more need for quorums or bureaucratic deadlock. Just competition. Like in the real world.”

A few people clapped. I didn’t. He seemed so certain that making democracy transactional was the solution, like the answer to every problem could be found in markets. I wasn’t sure how adding money to this mess was going to help, but the man had a way of making it sound inevitable, like it was progress.

Before the applause even died down, another voice cut in from the back. Younger, impatient. He didn’t stand; he barely looked up from his tablet as he spoke, as if the meeting itself was beneath him.

“Voting? Analog voting? That’s the real problem here,” he muttered, swiping his screen with rapid, decisive flicks. “Why are we even doing this manually? Look, everything we need is already online. We know what people want—we have the data! Their social media, their purchasing habits, even their Netflix preferences. Algorithms can predict it all. So why are we still pretending like we need to physically vote? Let the AI handle it. We can skip the whole process. No more ballots, no more deadlock. Just instant, optimised decisions.”

He paused briefly, tapping at something on his screen. “And while we’re at it, we should offer tiered voting options. People who really care can pay for premium influence over bigger decisions. Personalization is the future. Why should everyone have the same vote? It’s inefficient.”

Some people in the room were nodding, caught up in the promise of a streamlined, data-driven world. The man seemed oblivious to how unsettling his vision was to the rest of us. The idea that we could just leave it all to machines, that democracy could be automated, felt wrong. Like we were being slowly written out of our own system.

Then, just as quickly, someone else rose, this time from the far side of the room. He didn’t have the polished tone of the first man or the cool detachment of the second. He had a roughness to him, his voice raw and forceful, and when he spoke, it was like every word was a hammer coming down hard.

“Of course this is where we’ve ended up,” he growled, glaring around the room. “You people, with your markets and your algorithms; always looking for new ways to distract us while the real power stays exactly where it’s always been. These quorums, these referenda—they’re a joke. They’re designed to keep us powerless, divided, wasting our energy on decisions that don’t matter while the rich and the corporations keep control. The system is rigged from the start.”

He jabbed a finger in the air, as if pointing to the invisible forces he was railing against. “We don’t need more referenda, we don’t need to vote on whether we’re obligated to vote. What we need is a real people’s assembly, no quorums, no bureaucratic traps. Power to the workers, direct democracy, no capitalist interference.”

He paused for breath, his chest heaving with the force of his speech. “This whole system exists to keep us confused and compliant. The only referendum that matters is the one where we vote to tear it all down.”

The room fell into a thick silence after he finished. It was the kind of speech that made you want to stand up and cheer, even if you weren’t entirely sure you agreed. But it also felt like it was about more than just the referenda.

I went home that night, feeling no closer to an answer. I found yet another envelope from the Bureau of Referenda waiting in my mailbox. The third one in as many weeks. This time, the question was whether we should lower the quorum needed for referenda to pass. But before we could vote on that, we had to decide whether this referendum would meet the quorum it was meant to lower. I didn’t even open it - tossed it straight into the recycling bin.

At some point, enough is enough.

People like me - we don’t have time for endless referenda about referenda. We’ve got jobs, families, lives to manage. I get that democracy is important. I want my voice to matter. But this? This is a hamster wheel. Voting every few years is fine, but now they want us to vote on everything. And the more they ask us to vote, the less anyone cares.

At the end of the day, most people just want a system that works.

I’m not asking for much - just a little sanity in the process. But instead, the Bureau keeps churning out ballots. A referendum on whether to vote on voting, a referendum on whether not voting should be punishable, a referendum on whether any of this even matters.

And I can’t help but wonder: does anyone even remember what the first referendum was about? Because I sure don’t.

So here I am, ignoring the latest ballot like everyone else. Maybe the slick businessman will figure out a way to profit from the chaos, or the tech whiz will program an app to vote for me. Or maybe the guy with the clenched fists will tear the whole thing down.

But I’m done with it. Life’s too short.