Polls don't vote, people vote!

...to paraphrase the National Rifle Association's very old and often trotted out war cry. Unlike in the U.S., where pre-election polls seem to come out almost daily, polls predicting which parties are the most popular and how many seats each party would take "if the election were held today" are officially banned in Patria. The reason for the ban is so that voters will not think "my party is trailing so badly that it's not worth voting", or "my party is such a shoo-in that I don't need to vote", or "I like Party A, but they're trailing so badly in the polls that I should just hold my nose and vote for Party B".

Although there are no official polls, there are plenty of rumors and on-the-street talk about which party is the front-runner and how many seats each party could win. Current scuttlebutt: the Amrita Party is trailing the SRM badly and could lose almost half of its seats, the Jungle Party could double or even triple its seats (the Jim Rome show is becoming extremely popular in Patria!), and the SRM is the real wild card as its "no more made-in-China" economic nationalism is playing very well among voters who have lost their jobs, had their homes foreclosed, or have been otherwise screwed over since the economy went down the crapper.

Drive for 25. FAIL

The "Drive for 25", a campaign to raise the legal drinking age to 25, was one of the National Union's campaign promises in the 43rd Congress election of 1986 (when the NU still hadn't quite found its testosterone-fueled law 'n order niche). The campaign attracted little support and eventually crashed like a drunk driver with a blood alcohol level far over .08. Twenty four years later, "Drive for 25" is back, though with support mainly from the social conservative fringe parties such as Family Values Party and Chastity Party rather than the NU. Not to mention busybodies who don't believe in things such as personal responsibility and free choice.

Why flog this dead horse? Apparently there are elements in Patria who believe that raising the drinking age to 25 would cut down on impaired driving as well as get the culture of drinking out of college campuses. Didn't anyone ever tell these misguided social crusaders that a lot of drunk drivers are over 25, and college campuses are not limited to 18- to 23-year-old kids.

Just as in 1986, the 2010 "Drive for 25" campaign is destined for failure. Patria's legal drinking age is 18, the same age at which it is legal to join the armed forces, vote, serve on juries, and do a whole lot of other adult things. Yes, it is true that drinking is a privilege, not a constitutional right like voting. But there are better ways to fight drunk driving (e.g. lifetime license revocation, serious hard time in prison, even special "convicted DUI" license plates) than raising the drinking age to 25 (why stop there? why not hike it all the way to 30?). How will making 40-something folks born in the 1960s produce photo ID in order to buy beer at the ball park help deter drunks from getting behind the wheel?