No Vote

Heads swiveled. Tiny beads of sweat gathered below the noses of the pundits.

“No absentee, no one showing up at the polls days earlier.” Custis Merrin announced in sheer bewilderment. Wind whistled through the empty polling places. The fallen leaves stirred up in dust devils. Like an idea of America where people in blue states and red states finally agreed on one thing: don’t vote.

For decades, the American people couldn’t even agree on whether a hot dog was a sandwich (it is), cheering for respective teams, and selecting a school for their children. Now, they had united as one to not let these politicians ruin their lives.

The billions of dollars spent to coordinate the electorate all went for naught.

Carmina Gonzalez looked at the data and smirked a bit. It was out of sheer astonishment. She stood at a board with absolutely no color. The white board was a blank slate where no states showed a single vote.

They would take the place of the absolute zero votes posted.

“Okay, this is what we’re going to do…we’re going to go to one of our election specialists, Geist Collins. Geist?”

“Well, this is certainly unprecedented that there are zero votes to count in the United States of America, especially during a general election.”

Carmina smiled a nervous smile. “Okay, thank you Geist.” He tipped his head in recognition. She regrouped in her head. Merrin chewed on the end of a pencil until the graphite stained his tongue. Sensing they had to do something, they all chose to bring facts from previous elections up like dredged cars from a lake. With this information broadcast on every device imaginable, the news people breathed. Then, a count figured what they thought was a vote.

“That was just the system reseting,” Merrin sighed.