Saramago: Seeing the 2008 Election

declare this an emergency
come on and spread a sense of urgency
and pull us through
and pull us through
and this is the end
this is the end of the world

proclaim eternal victory
come on and change the course of history
and pull us through
and pull us through
and this is the end
this is the end of the world

- Muse, Apocalypse Please

Jose Saramago’s latest book, Seeing (reviews here and here) is an allegory about how governments respond in the face of unknowable enemies. Saramago presents a particular conondrum brought about when a democracy votes to reject the type of democracy presently being offered:

The novel opens with an elegant deception, a form of bluff. There is terrible weather in the city on election day; no one is showing up at the polling booths. Perhaps no one will come at all, and this will be the country’s first election with absolutely no votes cast. But the weather clears up, and people start voting even in the rain. Absence is not the problem. The problem is the votes themselves: 13 percent for the party on the right, 9 percent for the party in the middle and, 2.5 percent for the party on the left. The rest of the votes, more than 70 percent, are blank. The government, in consternation but still clinging to the constitution, has the mandatory second election the following week. This time 83 percent of the votes are blank. The people of the city have not abstained from voting, and they have not spoiled their ballots. They have not written in candidates. They have democratically objected to the particular form of democracy on offer.

Most reviews leave out the Orwellian tone of this book. In order to understand why the electorate has voted this way the incumbent government sends out spies (who have all signed oaths testifying that they did indeed vote, and did not cast blank ballots) in order to understand the psyche of the average voter. In both elections, neither reporters nor exit pollsters can get to the root of the issue behind the vote. No voter is lawfully required to say who they voted for, and all of them exercise this right.

The government sends out spies to listen in on voters standing in line during the second election, and they implement powerful tools of analysis to speculate the implied meaning of conversational snippets as innocent as “nice weather”. Since there is no obvious bitching amongst the voters about issues while standing in line, government spies have to resort to imputing nefarious meanings to innocuous phrases in order to deconstruct the electorate’s psyche. They do this through video recording and subsequent analysis of body language. It turns out that the idea is not too far from reality.

Unable to discern the reason behind the odd voting pattern, the government sends out some brownshirt types to round up a random sample of voters, who are then interrogated and psychologically assessed in an effort to understand the root of the issue. The problem - none of them are lawfully obliged to comment on their voting behaviour.

So, guess what the government does in the capitol city? It declares a state of emergency. Bombs are set off and blamed on terrrists. Things get dark.

This book is quite intense in its allegorical nature and it presents an interesting question: in an age of electronic voting vis-a-vis Diebold machines, what happens to blank ballots? Can a voter spoil their ballot if it is electronic? I can’t find anything on whether or not Diebold voting machines allow voters to cast blank ballots, thereby voting against all brands of democracy offered during an election.

As we head into the next US election, some are speculating that Bush, with his newly found near-dictatorial powers, is one ‘event‘ away from declaring a national emergency and thereby suspending all constitutional priveledges.

Election included.

What if Saramago is onto something here?