2012-11-08
Explanation
This comic imagines a bizarre alternative to democracy called "Evodevomocracy." It opens with a political figure congratulating the winner of an election and consoling the loser, then noting a fundamental problem with democracy: everyone votes, but only the largest bloc gets their candidate elected, leaving a large portion of the electorate disenfranchised. The proposed solution is to use genetic technology to physically blend the winning and losing candidates into a single individual, with gene expression from each corresponding to their percentage of the votes on each issue.
The candidates are understandably hesitant -- one says "What? I'm not sure I..." -- but they are pressured with rhetoric about fairness and told to strip and step into the "combination chamber." The result, labeled "Soon...", shows a grotesque merged person walking away thinking "Suckers! None of that even made sense!" The audience laughs uproariously, and two observers remark "Maybe I should've paid more attention in science class" and "Yeah..."
The comic satirizes how political rhetoric about fairness and representation can be used to justify absurd policies, and how scientific-sounding language can bamboozle people who lack scientific literacy. The merged candidate's internal monologue reveals it was all a con, but the public went along with it because the argument sounded sophisticated. The votey panel shows the merged figure lying in bed thinking "I'm getting so much karma for this," adding an extra layer of internet-culture humor.