Anyone who has ever lived in Chicago (such as The Happy Pessimist) is well aware of the fact that just because you’re dead, that doen’t mean that you have to be politically inactive. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dead people vote in Cook County in every election.

The fraudsters of Cook County are pikers compared to the inhabitants of the smoke-filled rooms of Washington State.

These latter politicos have managed to arrange for the election of two dead men by substantial majorities. In the Seattle suburb of Des Moines, John Rosentangle won 71 percent of the vote over write-in candidates in the King County Water District 54. Rosentangle died last August of an illness. In a city council race on the Washington coast in Aberdeen, John Erak, also dead, beat Alan Richrod, very much alive, with 53 percent of the vote.

This situation has actually occurred before elsewhere in the USA. In 2012 in Florida, the late Earl K. Wood was elected Orange County Tax Collector. In Alabama, the late Charles Beasley was elected to the Bibb County Commission. In 2000, the late Mel Carnahan was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2002,the late Patsy Mink was reelected to the U.S. House of Representatives. And the list goes on. And on. And on.

Now, the guardians of the polls claim that all these worthies died too close to the election date to have their names removed from the ballot. Hah!  A likely story! Your humble guide to the collapse of Western Civilization (me) believes that these elections are part of a brilliant scheme concocted by our finest minds to populate our various representative assemblies and administrative bureaucracies with members who are even more brain-dead than their current occupants, no mean feat.

To what end? you ask. To improve the quality of government, that’s what!

Think about it. Dead legislators cannot concoct laws! Dead bureaucrats cannot enforce regulations!

The next time your local city committee complains that it’s getting very hard to dig up people willing to run for office, show them they’re wrong! Take them to the local cemetery, hand them shovels, and let them have at it! It will give the popular phrase “the dead hand of government” a whole new meaning.

The voters will never notice.