Alabama Wants Your Vote(rs)

Ladies and Gentlemen, my wife and I went to Atlanta for Dragon*Con for our honeymoon recently and had a lot of fun. But all was not fun and games and alcohol and steam punk and scantily clad women in Princess Leia costumes. You see, my wife and I live in Mississippi, which means if we want to make any kind of decent time, we had to drive through Alabama to reach Georgia. Now, here's a fun fact about Alabama. Statistically speaking, person-for-person they are some of the most insane drivers in the states.* I was cut off countless times, flipped off, yelled at, and otherwise harassed for having the gall to only do 85 in a 65. Often times by people in large vehicles who seem to have forgotten the tail of their vehicle comes so painfully close to the front of my car when they do so. At one point, I even had a car tailgate me so close I couldn't see their headlights. Again, all while doing almost 90 miles per hour. "Alabamans are insane." I thought.

Soon however, I realized that this aggression was more than simple road rage. You see, while driving, my wife and I got stuck in traffic jams FIVE times in as many hours for no good reason. Traffic would inexplicably come to a crawl between two small towns twenty miles apart. There were no roadblocks. There were no accidents. Not once did I ever see anything that even remotely resembled a reasonable (or unreasonable for that matter) explanation for why people violently trying to pass me at speeds in excess of 100 mph would suddenly decide to do ten miles per hour for the next five miles. People. Just. Stopped. Moving. The trip back was no exception. Many times for no good reason, traffic stopped in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't until then that it all began to make sense. It's all about political power.

Electoral votes are determined are determined every year with the census. With this year being 2009, the census is surely underway. Not satisfied with their respectable 9 electoral votes, Alabama has realized that in order to claim a population large enough to warrant an increase in electoral votes, the state has to have new residents who have spent a certain amount of time living within its borders. As such, Alabama has fiendishly trained its drivers to slow down dramatically on its highways so that people from out of state will be stranded in Alabama for weeks, even months at a time. Thus, when the census takers arrive, the State suddenly has a much larger population, and thus, more electoral votes. No wonder people were driving like madmen, I realized. Who knows how long they've been trying to escape the Great State of Alabama?

Perhaps this explains why Mississippi's evil twin state has an inverted number of votes. Alabama and Mississippi are practically mirror images of each other. Mississippi has 6 votes, Alabama 9. Again, same shape, just flipped over. If they get that tenth vote, Mississippi will be reduced to only 01 electoral votes. Oh yes, Alabama is Mississippi's evil twin alright. We know this because the evil twin in movies is always more powerful, hence more votes. Plus, they're stealing the voters we do have away. On top of that, I'm 95% certain Alabama has a goatee, proof once more that they are the evil one.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Friends. As you drive across this wide nation of ours, please heed my warning before Alabama poaches your voice. Drive around. It will be quicker, and in the end, better for the country.

You have been informed.
*All statistics based solely on personal observation.