TONY J BENDER: That’s Life — And The Winner Is …

There was an election last week and Democracy lost. Just 19.66 percent of eligible North Dakotans voted — 114,340. Meanwhile, the winner, Apathy, recorded 467,301 yawns. The only place with lower turnout was North Korea. Isn’t it obvious now that we need more undocumented immigrants to do the voting Americans just won’t do?

Even more disconcerting was the revelation that there are 54,105 perverts in the state, a.k.a., Republicans, who boldly voted for former GOP secretary of state candidate Will Gardner despite revelations of a past arrest for window peeping at North Dakota State University girls dorms.

On a hunch that Gardner may have carried the college girl demographic, incumbent Al Jaeger, who plans to run in November as an independent (along with many Democrats), immediately began considering ways to impress coeds, so he’s started wearing jorts, has opened a MySpace account and is thinking about a tattoo.

Democratic challenger Josh Boschee, with just 32,865 votes, has a steep hill to climb. For him and fellow Democrats, I have a suggestion — a name change. No, not a change from Democrat to Republican, although there are indications that is what Heidi Heitkamp is trying to do. She’s not running as a Democrat, she’s running as a blonde. It’s a Goldilocks campaign — she’s not too liberal, not too Republican, she’s juuuuuust the right amount of conservative for North Dakota.

Meanwhile, Kevin Cramer got an endorsement from Public Advocate of the United States, which perpetuates more LGBT conspiracy theories than Alex Jones on a three-day coke binge. Apparently, Cramer thought it was a good idea to complete a survey for the group, scoring a 100 percent, thereby winning their undying but strictly platonic heterosexual love.

But back to my name change strategy. All Democratic candidates should change their middle initials to R. Then, they should move the R to the end. For instance, Joshua Boschee R., because as Will Gardener has proven, 68 percent of North Dakotans will vote for anyone with an R behind their name. If a certain company had changed it’s name in North Dakota, Toys Us R would still be in business.

The low voter turnout wasn’t helped by reports of two Black Panthers intimidating people at polling places. Or maybe that was a Fox News rerun. Otherwise, how do we explain the abysmal turnout? It smacks of voter suppression. Almost nowhere was the vote suppressed like it was in Cass County, where all but 13.52 percent of eligible voters were locked up in cages and separated from their parents. Hold it! That’s something else we’re doing in the name of freedom.

Freedom is hard. They’ve set the bar too high. It might take half an hour to vote. On a Tuesday! I don’t know about you, but my Tuesdays are sacred. Don’t even try to make me vote on Hump Day.

Voting is oppression at its worst. First you have to do intense homework on policy issues by watching 30-second ads featuring Heitkamp overhauling a diesel engine with just a crescent wrench, and a nonplussed Cramer looking like he’ll have to eat quiche on Fear Factor. Then, you have to blacken all those little ovals and risk carpel tunnel syndrome. It’s brutal.

We need to modernize. We should run our elections through Facebook like the Russians do or use telepathy like the North Koreans. They know exactly how you want to vote. The way it is now, democracy is a big time-waster. How will we ever find the time to complain about government if we’re too busy exercising our constitutional duty to vote? We’ve got better things to do. Something’s gotta give.