Dovi’s Digest Volume 229
Election day special! 🟦🟥🗳
A weekly newsletter for all your intellectual, spiritual, and physical needs
Hello all! Welcome to Volume 229 of Dovi’s Digest!
For the last few months, I’ve been carefully reading, collecting and collating articles on the upcoming U.S. elections. I had a bumper edition planned, with op-eds, articles and cartoons from both sides of the aisle. However, as the first Tuesday of November drew closer, I saw more and more vitriol, more and more hate, more and more division. As a result, over the last few weeks I vacillated whether to go ahead with my original plan or just to write something completely unrelated. I decided to split the difference, with a regular Digest last week, and a special election one today, which I did my best to make non-partisan.
It's fine if you totally skip this edition, but please PLEASE do yourself a favour and check out the Wikipedia list of Non-human electoral candidates.
Do you enjoy the Digest? Would you like it to get better? Then please consider sharing it, as the more articles I’m sent, the better it is. It only takes a few seconds, and all you need to do is click here 👇. Thank you!
Keep those articles (and everything else) coming.
Have a great weekend,
Dovi
And now, the articles:
What to Know About the Electoral College
“This is a very unique and bespoke system that I think nobody would create again today,” one expert said.
The Defining Images of the 2024 Election
From Donald Trump’s shooting to Kamala Harris at the Ellipse, here’s what stood out during the 2024 campaign.
To Fight Misinfo, News Outlets Are Putting Plans In Place To Combat False Election Night Stories
In election night planning, news outlets are being mindful that they have to keep watch on what doesn’t happen along with what does.
Squirrels, Soda and Tractors: 12 Emergencies You Never Thought About but Election Officials Are Prepared For
Local election workers share how they would respond to a range of scenarios, using a 52-deck card game.
The Ad Campaign (Audio)
Advertising is the biggest expense in a race expected to cost $3.5 billion. These are the stories the candidates are using it to tell.
Quotes of the Day:
““Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…” — Winston Churchill
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Word of the Day:
Gerrymander
jeh·ree·man·duh/ˈdʒɛrɪmandə/
Verb
gerund or present participle: gerrymandering
manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class.
to achieve (a result) by gerrymandering.
"an attempt to gerrymander the election result"
Do you know a word you think others should know about? Submit it here!
Facts of the Day:
Voting is compulsory in Australia.
In Gambia, where the literacy rate is just over 50%, votes are cast by dropping marbles into colour coded metal drums with pictures of the candidates.
Multiple animals have been elected as mayors in the U.S., including dogs, cats, and goats. (My personal favourite is Pigasus the Immortal, a boar hog who was a candidate in the 1968 presidential elections.)
Candidates in the U.K. have included Elmo, Lord Buckethead (first photo) and Mr Fishfinger (second).
Cartoon of the Day:
Tweet of the Day:
