The furry right to vote

Others halfway across the globe are also having their elections, so as part of the “celebration”, the team from American website, BuzzFeed News, decided to conduct an experiment to give their voting system a little test—with a cat.
Pets Team 27 August 2015

It’s not just Singapore that’s feeling the political adrenaline. Others halfway across the globe are also having their elections, so as part of the “celebration”, the team from American website, BuzzFeed News, decided to conduct an experiment to give their voting system a little test. Over there, members of the public who wish to vote in elections are required to be legally registered.

The Labour party was having their leadership elections, and had done a purge of hundreds of registrants earlier this week—supposedly to ensure that all of their registered supporters were genuine and loyal voters.

Unconvinced, Buzzfeed News sent Ned—a three-year-old kitty—to see if he’d make the cut. It was easy to apply: Ned just needed to submit some of his personal details and pay £3 (S$4.77). He has a home address and knows his date of birth, but some fields like his age and email were a bit harder to fill in. The BuzzFeed News team gave him a hand—using the cat age calculator, they found that he was 29 human years of age. They also figured that Ned would be the kind of hipster that would use hotmail, hence creating soupycampbell1986@hotmail.com.

… And it worked! Ned was granted a vote! 

Once his application was approved, he immediately received emails and leaflets to help him make up his mind. To follow through with the experiment, the team went ahead to see if they could really make the vote. It seems that Ned thought left-wing supporter, Jeremy Claw-byn, would make a good leader.

Of course, once the vote went through, the BuzzFeed News team quickly informed the party to exclude his feline vote. He may not have a bad track record of being affiliated with other parties, but he is a politically apathetic cat.

Puss won’t be able to vote in Singapore’s upcoming elections, but with Nomination Day (1 September) drawing near, perhaps you can pass him some of those election materials to help you make your choice! This year, there are several new faces to choose from: Henry Quek (People’s Action Party), Kevryn Lim (National Solidarity Party), Fatimah Akthar (Singaporeans First) and Daniel Goh (Workers’ Party).

 

(Image and information source: BuzzFeed News)