Election '08 Revealed

The Rainbow Resort Election '08: The Controversy, the Scandal, the Truth

A lot of people were thrown off with the sudden change in the election. They felt betrayed and tricked into voting out their top two favorites, Kirby and Meta Knight. It led many to complain. It had some speculate about my intentions. Well, here's the truth: you're right.

Yeah. I admit it. I threw out the election. I flipped up the protective shield and smashed the "self destruct" button down with a fist, destroying my creation. It was flawed, you see. It had to be destroyed. So, in the mean time, I played a little joke. To understand my intentions and reasons, you have to hear the story, the full story, of what led to it.

Now, everyone knows that on a straight vote, Meta Knight and Kirby would dominate. Sure, other votes could be cast, but they would be drowned out by the outpour for the two puffballs. A clever tactic was devised, however, taken from a 2002 poll amoung one-hundred of the world's greatest authors. They were each asked to comprise a list of ten of the greatest books. Now, these were not ranked, just asked for. People disagreed about what was best, but an unanimous favorite emerged: Don Quixote.

Most of them would agree that it was not the greatest book. However, it was good enough to make their top ten. Rank was not a factor, only consideration. It was a good book, and more people thought that of it than Hamlet or Crime and Punishment. In fact, fifty percent more did. It wasn't the greatest literary work ever, yet it really was.

This was the situation I wanted to recreate, or at least grasp at. Not everyone likes Meta Knight and Kirby best. So, if a ballot was offered that granted folks the chance to choose from six of their favorite characters, possibly a dark horse would emerge and take over the two titans. Oh, that would be wonderful. Even if not, at least a clear third could be seen who wasn't, say, 10% of the votes.

That was wishful thinking. No, rather than vote on who they liked best, most everyone just funneled their votes into Meta Knight or Kirby. Now, I guarded against doing this in the manner of, "Oh, disregarding what you were told? Putting your vote all on one person? Well, then, all of those duplicate votes are cancelled!" I thought that would learn folks, show them what they got for not paying attention. Well, it didn't. Even at one vote at a time, the predicted pinnicals rose up, soaring above the rest, too far to even be considered.

It was a lost effort. I tried to get people to vote for someone else in addition to the fan favorites, but they wouldn't. So, here, I thought, "Well, if they don't want to pay attention to the rules, I'll learn 'em another way." Hence, the elimination. It's a commonly known fact that people don't really read pages all that. Hey, I just proved that. It's also known that, because of this, generally a poll just gets the "hot name" picked regardless of the actual question, whether good or bad. So, why not have the top two booted out by the ones who love them?

Cruel? Under handed? Sneaky. Yes, yes, and more yes. There was really no point to go on with it. The top two had several fold more votes than anyone else in what was suppose to be an "even race". With no real chance of having an outcome, I just killed my creation. Hope you understand.

Now, however, I know better. The to-end-all election shall return, you see. Every character from every game (that is at least a year old) in a complete, wide spread ballot. Until then, I hope you can see the humor in Maxim Tomato winning a favorite character poll.