2040 election - a dystopia

By the time the American people were voting for their president in the 2040 election, voting in a conventional sense had already disappeared. No longer were there voting booths or polling stations or election officials; no more were electronic voting machines used than paper ballots, the total count of both being zero; all was done via each person's Viewer, the smart screens embedded in their eyes.

Each person responded to the prompt that appeared on their home display, able to 'nudge' it with a gently applied thought as it sat there blinking in their visual field. The world around them dimmed to 50% and in its place appeared short video segments of each presidential candidate; to nudge one of the videos opened up a drop-down list of his, her, or their (openly trans-gender, as well as trans-racial and trans-species, persons now being quite common in politics, especially considering that the last president was trans-gender and trans-racial) positions on the various issues. All in video format unless closed-captioning was requested, in which case the video was replaced with an archaic-looking block of text. Since most people could absorb information far more easily by watching videos than by reading, the closed-captioning option was rarely used.

A timer hung suspended from the right visual corner of each person's Viewer. It showed a countdown to when voting would close. Voting had been open for 11 months now, and still had another 8 more months to go. A 19-month voting window had been standardized into law for all 44 states and for all federal and state elections, based on recommendations from experts in psychology, disability access and human rights codes.

Once a person (not only a citizen, for now any inhabitant of the United States of America was legally allowed to vote in any and all elections, thanks to the Fairness and Dignity in Elections Bill of 2029 that had passed unanimously in both houses of Congress and then been ceremoniously signed by the President just hours later) cast his, her or their vote, via triple-nudge with i-verify retina confirmation, they had 90 days to change their mind and vote differently. After all, new holosuite experiences were coming out all the time, and anyone might live a different experience in some possible future scenario under one of the presidential candidates that, being so realistic and convincing, might cause them to wish to change their mind. Although to be fair, the 90 day limit on changing one's vote did had over four dozen exemption clauses in the law, for such people whose severe ailments, including Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia, Stress, Post-stress, Pre-stress, Anxiety, or the almost universally diagnosed Emotional Disturbance Disorder, impacted their ability to competently and reliably choose a candidate to vote for if subjected to the impositions of strenuous time constraints. In fact it was all but inevitable that next year, the new updated version of the Human Rights Code would simply mandate that all votes may be changed at any time up to the close of the voting period, and with certain exceptions for a period of time after voting had ended.

One did not weigh issues or have very strong opinions on the issues of the political races. One simply accessed his, her or their own Happiness 4-Quotient Bank and ran the government-sanctioned meta-analysis app to cross-reference one's levels of Happiness, Pleasure, Relaxation, and Stimulation with those life experiences that were impacted directly or indirectly by decisions coming from the presidential level, giving weight to each reference-point based on the degree to which that particular issue impacted one's own life. The final result was a statistical correlation of each issue to one's own H4Q profile, and this was then compared to the specific issues advocated by each candidate for president in order to determine to what degree those issues matched up with one's own H4Q issue-dominant Positivity Rating attractors. The result was a simple percentage. Most people chose to vote for the candidate who scored the highest percentage on their own personal meta-analysis.

Of course the candidate who led the greatest theorized future increase in H4Q for the greatest number of people, was legally required to be president; it was all right there in the Bill of Rights, having finally been imported over from the Declaration of Independence by Supreme Court mandate, "The right to Life, Liberty and Happiness." The phrase "the pursuit of happiness" had of course been stricken when the statement was imported into the Bill of Rights, being an entirely ableist, ageist concept and thus illegal. However, it was not always so clear-cut who would become president even on any given moment of totalized aggregate H4Q measure for the entire nation, in part because of the (admittedly minimal) difficulties of controlling for future variables such as individual people changing their minds, but primarily due to the fact that election anxiety increased in the populace as the election drew closer and closer, and this increase tended to distort H4Q measurements enough to cause the predictability of the eventual winner of the election to be in some doubt. The people voted in the electoral college system, of course, but their representatives who cast the actual ballots for president were legally required to vote for that person for whom it could be predicted with scientific accuracy would ensure the greatest future increase in H4Q for the greatest number of people. If there was too much uncertainty in these predictions, as indicated by a large enough skew between the peoples' actual vote and the legally-mandated option for the election representatives to vote for, post-election voting was implemented to correct this skew.

All in all, most people were happy. It did not matter so much who the president was, to most people anyway, but they knew they were required to invest time and effort into the election season. If asked by their psychiatrist, employer, government health bureau officer, or social worker they may be required to confirm an understanding of the important issues, and be able to state where their own H4Q measures are in relation to those issues and to the candidates supporting various positions on them. In addition there was the certain bombardment of constant advertising, necessary for economic and data-collection reasons of course, but despite how the election season allowed for greater max doses of anti-anxiety, anti-depression, anti-emotional disregulation, anti-stress, anti-post-stress, anti-pre-stress, anti-cognitive overload, ant-discrimination and anti-emotional poverty medications, it was still a somewhat difficult time for most people. And there was always the further reason that if one did not react within a range of predictable responses to the election cycle, if one remained more or less equally happy or unaffected, or if one did not pay attention to the crucial issues at stake -- and certainly if one failed to run the all-important meta-analysis on his own H4Q! -- then severe social censure would follow, up to and including termination from one's employment, with 'creating a hostile work environment' being the most commonly cited reason for this. And most people did not want to go back to the Universal Right to Work Board; not because it was an unpleasant experience or because their current job was most likely better than any future job they might be assigned, but simply because it took a fair amount of time to go through the URWB processes and screenings, and that time could, obviously, be better spent managing one's own H4Q.

As usual your fiction is very good. It made me laugh a few times, especially the pre-stress ailment is hilarious, but more than funny it is just good predictive science fiction. It has the air of a good novel.

Thanks. I would plan to expand it into a proper story, but I don't have the motivation really. Writing these sort of things leaves me tense, like a rubber band is stretched tight inside of my torso, and also somewhat drained.

Ouch.

But of course a novel of this would take years and use up all energy, I can see that.

From Wikipedia, entry on Anxiety and Pre-Stress:

Last updated 2/6/36

According to the DSM 9, Anxiety Disorder is different from Pre-Stress Disorder in so far as with anxiety a person has already acquired past experiences that now negatively impact his/her/their/its anticipating having similar experiences in the future, whereas with pre-stress he/she/they/it simply anticipate negative impacts without having had any such acquired past experiences at all in his/her/theirs/its life, and/or he/she/they/it state that such negatives impacts are the case for himself/herself//themself/itself.[1]

Controversy

Some non-reputable (see common interdisciplinary term of use, [Link: 'Non-Reputable Practice'][2]) psychologists and unlicensed persons outside of the psychological and psychiatric fields have inquired as to how it might be possible to develop a 'disorder' around anticipating negative impacts for things about which one has had no experience at all, and how valid may be the claims to such by the individual in question.[3] These inquiries have been thoroughly dismissed in the relevant scientific literature, for example by pointing out that according to the Human Rights Code it is a gross violation of basic human dignity to question the validity of another person's firmly held convictions.[4]

Furthermore, experts have pointed out that it may constitute a violation of the respective statutes within the Code to suggest that another person does not in fact firmly hold such convictions as he/she/they/it claim to hold.[5] Reputable psychologists and medical professionals, following both moral and legal guidelines, avoid such dangerous questions as "how it might be possible to anticipate something about which one has no experience at all" or "how valid may be the claims to such by the individual in question", due to the power-differentials of structural oppression implicit in the asking of the question (see moral and legal guidelines for reputable practice in the medical professions, [Link: Multi-Cross-Hyper-Phasic Intersectionality Sciences][6]).

It has existed as canonical law within the psychological, psychiatric, and medical fields for over a decade [7] that a person's subjective claims should not be exposed to difficult or demeaning interrogations, with difficult or demanding being defined entirely and only by the person (or persons, in the cases of multi-identity individuals, see [Link: Multi-Identity Individuality][8]) himself/himselves/herself/herselves/theyself/themselves/itself/itselves, due to the emotional discomfort and identity damage this will cause.[9]

Important notice to users, 16/7/36: Wikipedia has recently been informed by representatives of the US Tribunal on Human Rights Abuses and Immoral Practices that this present Wikipedia entry may constitute illegal speech due to violations of federal law, including 1) propagating misinformation (Federal Oversight Committee on Truth in News and Media, report 2B-47c-2032, sub paragraph 59 [10]), 2) causing discrimination or normalizing discriminatory practices [11], and 3) knowingly or unknowingly causing or leading to be caused emotional harm and/or identity harm.[12] Deletion of this present entry and all associated materials is immanent pending resolution of a frivolous legal complaint lodged by one user who has been publicly identified as a non-reputable psychologist working outside of the field of proper psychological practice.[13]