Mayor Tufts kissing a fish.
Photo: Jeff Baenen/AP/Corbis
America’s democratic voting system boils down to three core concepts: Each person gets one vote, the candidate with the most votes wins, and that candidate is old enough to cross the street without holding mommy’s hand. None of these things took place in yesterday’s mayoral election for Dorset, Minnesota. The town’s twenty-something residents can vote as many times as they want, at a cost of $1 per vote. The ballots are placed in a plastic bin, and a blindfolded man picks one of them, raffle-style, to determine the town’s new mayor. This year, for the second year in a row, the mayor is Bobby Tufts, a 4-year-old boy. Is this what the colonists died for, Minnesota?
