Distinguished Senators, the Washington Nationals Blog That Is Great

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Psephography

We're starting to get early results from the All Star voting, which reminded me that I'm boycotting it this year and probably forever.

They announced before the season that there wouldn't be any more paper ballots. This news, along with a neat reminder of why the internet is terrible, can be found in a piece by Ted Berg on "For the W!N," USA Today's attempt to show how hip and snarky it can be.
Bad news for people who aren’t reading this: Major League Baseball will eliminate its paper All-Star ballots in 2015...
Only people who don't know how to internet because reasons use paper ballots. For teh Epic W!N LOL!
This is terrible news for people who love paper chads but great news for inevitable Justin Bieber write-in campaigns.
OMG Justin Bieber amirite! Such chad very ballot wow. Something something bacon.
And moving to an online-only ballot might help the league keep it a bit more current, rather than frustrate fans with a list half-full of guys who are hurt or haven’t played regularly.
Look at the ballot, you meme-spewing halfwit. Jonathan Schoop has played nine games this year, and he's on there. Scooter Gennett is back in the minors, but you can still vote for him. Anthony Rendon is on the ballot.

So anyway, I'm sitting this election out. I love paper ballots. We all enjoy baseball, but let's not act like there's not a lot of downtime. Poking out a little piece of paper next to "A. Rendon" forty times is second only to drinking when it comes to filling that downtime. It's to the point where I don't even want to go to a game after voting ends. Part of that is because I try to avoid going outside in August, but the lack of ballots has something to do with it.

I don't like not having the paper ballot option, because signing up for things on the internet is creepy. I've given MLB my information enough times that it probably doesn't matter at this point (I weighed my options, and writing in Livan was worth it), but it's still not something to be encouraged.

Look at this privacy policy. It doesn't come out and say, "We need you to sign up for stuff so we can mine rich veins of data," but I can read between the lines.

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