41 Elections

<Ping! You have until 23:59:59 tonight to submit your vote. Please do so as soon as possible. Failure to submit your vote is a violation against the Elections Act...>

Just when Daniel contemplated about whether he should bicker with Jake for the rest of the day instead of actually doing something productive, a sudden announcement was made from within his biochip, making him subconsciously scrunch his brows.

Realizing that Jake was giving a similar expression at the same time, Daniel spoke with a tone of curiosity, "It seems that you haven't voted for the local MP yet either?"

"Bah!" Jake sneered, waving Daniel off, "When would I have the time to do so with all the homework that the teachers have been giving us for the past few weeks! I'm more surprised that you haven't done it either considering the fact that you would always just vote for a random person not chosen in the ballot every single time."

"Since I'm transferring to another school, I needed to rush and finish everything in the curriculum if I want the credits for the current year to be transferred to the EUMA in time. Otherwise, I would need to study them all over again." Daniel replied in a matter-of-fact manner.

"You're trying to stuff a whole year of materials into your brain within two months? How brave and stupid at the same time!" Jake gave Daniel a thumbs up, looking as though he was cheering for his best friend even though he was secretly mocking the other person on the inside.

"Well, with more credits accumulated, I can graduate earlier in the future." Daniel retorted, "That being said, since you normally take one less course than me per school year, how do you plan on getting your secondary diploma before the age of 18?"

"Damnit! Stop nagging! Do you think you're my mom or something?!" Jake chided, looking a little indignant for suddenly being poked in his sore spot like that. "I'll think of a way to complete them in time! Maybe join a summer course or something... Wait! There's no time for this! We still need to watch and analyze the policies of all the politicans who're in the ballot before midnight! Stop arguing and come over to my room now!"

With that said, Jake rushed out of the kitchen and directly ran towards his own study room, urging Daniel to come along. Seeing how much of a rush the other was, Daniel also jogged forwards, trying to catch up with his friend.

Unlike Daniel's own apartment, Jake's was a penthouse apartment located at the very top of the apartment building that is 100 stories high. Since there's only one penthouse per apartment building within the city, it's quite rare for one to be able to be allocated such an apartment through the government's lottery system.

Though, with Jake's luck, he managed to get this apartment placed directly at the heart of the city without even paying a cent, making Daniel jealous to know end when he found out about this when the two of them came here to attend high school.

After rushing past the long and wide living room, Daniel finally arrived before Jake's study only to find the other scrambling to tidy up all his things in order to clear his desk. Instead of helping, Daniel simply leaned against the door frame and watched as his friend continued to procrascinate, making the whole room even messier than before. In the end, Jake simply gave a swiping motion and pushed everything on the table towards the ground, not caring whether or not such a motion would cause him to break something.

"You done?" Daniel finally spoke when he saw the squeaky clean desk that had all the trash transferred towards the ground. "You know you could have just told a cleaning bot to come and take care of all this for you, right?"

"Stop rubbing salt on my wounds!" Jake glared at Daniel in anger while motioning for the latter to sit on the chair next to him. "You know that my dad had me grounded for the whole week! He directly cancelled permission for me to use any smart devices other than the essentials! If not for the fact that you were the one who booked the simulation room this morning, I wouldn't have been able to experience VR for another few days!"

"What did you do this time..." Daniel furrowed his brows, knowing that Jake must have done something bad again for his dad to be furious enough to take away most of his son's life functions.

"Well I...." Jake started speaking but widened his eyes mid-sentence before suddenly stopping. He simply gave me an awkward look, as though he was trying to hold something back before directly changing the subject in an awkward manner, "We don't have time for this! I'll start the introduction video for the first politician now!"

Without waiting for Daniel to respond, Jake directly turned on his personal holographic tablet. The second the screen illuminated by itself, a pop up screen appeared at the very middle that said, "You have less than 8 hours left to complete your vote, would you like to start now? (Yes / No)"

Jake directly tapped yes, making the pop-up window disappear before another window turned itself automatically to full screen.

In this webpage, there were six different videos showing the faces of six different people displayed across the screen, each of them waiting to be played. If one were to scroll down the webpage, they would find a summary of all the promises the politicians made with a drop-down menu on each policy clearly describing them in detail.

Since all voters needed to complete a quiz at the end of the webpage to make sure that they understand everything the politicans say they're going to do when elected to office, with a brief introduction to each problem they're trying to solve, it would take at least a few hours for the two teenagers staring at the screen to memorize everything. Only after they get an 80% or above on the quiz are they allowed to finally vote.

To prevent politicians from lying and scamming their way to office, this makes sure that all citizens would understand and realize the pros and cons of electing their politician of choice to the office. Meanwhile, everything the politicians said on the video are subtitled and would glow at different shades red if what they said were false to a degree, yellow if they were somewhat false and green if they were fully true facts.

Although such gimmicks have since prevented many potential tyrants from taking office democratically, the time it takes for each election have made everyone annoyed to the point where the government had to make voting mandatory a while ago in order to get enough people to vote for them.

Since Daniel is already familiar with politics and their policies from watching the news once in a while, he only needed to skim through all the politician's proposals without actually watching their videos, which are much more time consuming, before completing the quiz all in one go.

Afterwards, the webpage refreshed and a ballot appeared, with a name attached right next to each circle that needed to be clicked and confirmed three times for final submission of the vote. Though, one can also type and search a name at the bottom of the screen and confirm their own selections outside of the proposed candidates, which is what Daniel has always done for the past two years.

"You're done already?!" Jake exclaimed.

He had just finished one of the videos sent from a politican, so he decided to take a peek at his friend's progress only to find the 'Voting Successful' screen at the very center of his friend's holographic screen. The large bolded font showing these two words made it looked as though they were mocking Jake for being a dumb uninformed retard, making him feel annoyed.

"Hey, can't you just help me with the quiz?" Jake pleaded when he thought that he wouldn't be able to complete the quiz by midnight if he were to work on it alone.

"You and I both know that's illegal." Daniel sneered in reply. "With the cameras placed in every room, Minerva would instantly be able to catch any collusion between the two of us. You better forget it before you say anything that can be viewed as damning evidence by Minerva, who's recording our voices right now."

Since his begging didn't work out, Jake could only grit his teeth and continue on with watching each video, struggling to stay awake the entire time. Though, after being forcefully fed a few caffeine tablets by his best friend, he didn't have any excuse not to continue studying anymore. With dark circles in his eyes, looking like he was about to die, Jake finally submitted his vote a few minutes before the deadline.