Satire: X Voting Machines

By Laurie Baron

SAN DIEGO — Although Donald Trump (aka Donelon Trusk) has criticized voting machines in the past, he wholeheartedly supports the usage of the new voting machines Elon Musk plans to manufacture for the next congressional and presidential elections.

Based on Musk’s giving cash awards to voters who select endorsed candidates, the X voting machines will be a hybrid of voting and slot machines and computers run by AI and connected to all the federal, local, and state agency databases the DOGE team has accessed.

When MAGA voters pull the levers on the machines, the tumblers will roll.  If a voter picks a straight MAGA ticket, he or she (there is no “they” in MAGA world), will view three pictures of Teslas, and the voter will be issued a coupon for a free Tesla.  To be sure, this will mean Musk will give away millions of Teslas, but that’s not a problem since for some reason the inventory of unsold Teslas at dealers keeps growing.

For voters who cast split tickets, icons representing different denominations of American currency will appear with the dollar amounts being higher for those primarily choosing Republicans and lower for those primarily voting for Democrats.  Musk assumes that after the first election utilizing these voting machines, voters will become conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs to vote straight MAGA tickets to receive their car or cash awards.

For citizens voting only for Democrats, their votes will go into the DOGE databases which will check their criminal and immigration records to invalidate those with any infractions, even parking tickets, and issue arrest warrants with the FBI or ICE depending on their status.  The database will disqualify votes cast by people whose handwriting differs from anything they have signed during their lives whether it was when they were children or senior citizens.

Even verified citizens will be subjected to a search on Ancestry.com to ascertain if their immigrant ancestors came to the United States legally.  African Americans descended from slaves will have their votes tossed out because their ancestors arrived here as property and not as immigrants.  Since Trump has banned birthright citizenship, even Blacks born here will lose their citizenship.

Musk has assured Trump that his X Voting Machines will not only guarantee supermajorities in Congress to rescind those clauses of the constitution that limit presidential power and governmental efficiency.  This will enable Trump to run for as many terms as he likes because unlike Biden, he will never grow too old to be president.

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Laurie Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University.