Also, it's written into the constitution that the number of words in the law is fixed at a million. It took them about forty-five minutes to reach that. In order to pass a new law, they must strike an equal number of words from some old law. It's like the conservation of mass and energy, only applied to the law. We have a fixed amount of law that we can tolerate... ignorance of the law, after all, is no excuse.

Another way things are different here is: you are not allowed to vote for any candidates, only against them. The candidate with the fewest votes against them is the winner, and goes directly to jail. There was a problem once, two years ago, when there was a three way tie for last place in a senatorial contest, but we solved it by sending all three to jail for two years, and now they serve alternate days in that august and historic body, where they vote against various proposals, ammendments, and bills of attainder. (We solved the other problem by changing the system so that, in any given election, you have one less vote than the number of candidates there are. You can use them all to vote against one candidate, or distribute them among them as you see fit. Unfortunately, you can't vote against them all. There is a ballot initiative coming up against this restriction, and I'm hoping not too many folks will oppose it... but we'll just have to wait and see...)

During the campaign, our candidates are forbidden from advertising in favor of anything, only in opposition to it. Or saying anyting positive in any way. And I have to admit, they don't seem to regard it as too much of a hardship.

And the campaigns actually, they are more accurately described as lying contests. Each candidate thinks of the biggest lies they can, the bigger the better. Whichever candidate tells the biggest lies.. well, usually most folks vote against their opponents. Above all other qualifications, we value dishonesty and disingenuousness in our elected officials. That's how we choose 'em.