The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048

by Paul Dueweke

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Election Fraud 101

  The search was simple. Jenner had merely entered a file named INSTITUTE, found another file within that named LEADERSHIP, and then located a single document called 2048 BALLOT. As she expected, the file was write-protected for everyone except the system manager, so Jenner was able to browse and modify anything. The document itself was nothing more than a spreadsheet with the names of about fifty students ordered down the first column and the names of the nine professors across the top row.

  Apparently, each professor could select a maximum of ten students for Leadership Training. The students’ names were ordered by the total number of votes each had received. The top two students were R. Galvez and T. C. Washington with five votes each. J. C. Nero and J. A. M. Dirac each had four votes. Six students each had three votes; nine had two votes; and twenty-five had one vote. The last six students on the list hadn’t received any votes.

  Jenner scanned down the list. The farther down the list she went, the more her eyes twinkled and her mouth turned up. Finally she stopped at Sherwood. “Ha!” she guffawed. “I knew I’d find you here, you miserable son-of-a-bitch!” Her eyes had come to rest at the second line from the bottom. “Let’s see, maybe I should give you ten votes. I’d like to see you talk your way out of that one!”

  She selected all the cells on Sherwood’s line and put a one in each. The spreadsheet immediately reorganized itself, moving Sherwood to the top of the list. Jenner looked at the new order and grinned, wondering if anyone might believe it. Okay, I wonder if anybody could believe Sherwood getting three votes. Probably not, but I guess that’s what it’ll take. The spreadsheet reorganized itself again showing seven students with three votes each. Well, R. A. Dake, let’s see what happens to you if I take one of your votes away. The name R. A. Dake shifted from line seven and three votes to line fifteen and two votes. Well, Dake, you didn’t want to take that course anyway, did you. Sherwood, on the other hand, is so much more worthy, wouldn’t you say? Okay, enough screwing around now, let’s get to some serious hacking. There’s got to be more to this Planck suicide than what was in the paper.