Episode 252 - Governor Gabbi

[grudlian. 4725]

21 minutes ago, Cam Bert said:

I'm not American or know much about American politics but I assume the whole state votes for the govern correct? So say Gabbi does make it on to the ballot, that means that a majority of the voters still had to vote for her right? Not just her five friends and grandma, but the majority of the third most populated state. California in 2017 had a population of 39,360,000 people. However that population includes youth and people that can't vote not to mention the number of people that don't vote for governor. The 2018 gubernatorial race had a turn out of 12,464,235 voters. That means Gabbi would need at least 33.4% of that vote which means roughly 4.2 million votes. That's more votes than any third party candidate has gotten in the history of California gubernatorial elections and as far as my math can tell more than all third party votes in California ever! What was it that drove them to this candidate they had never heard of? 

You're right that the entire state votes for governor.

The best counter to this would be straight ticket voting which is voting for one party and, in every election I've voted in, is the first option on the ballot (this probably varies state to state). It will say something like Straight Ticket and give you a box to check for your preferred party. With electronic ballots, you can check the straight ticket box which fills in the box and, as you scroll through the rest of the ballot, can make individual changes for a particular candidate.

Straight ticket voting has always been a thing but, purely anecdotal evidence based on my friends, is that straight ticket voting has increased significantly after 2016. I don't remember if they listed what party Gabbi was erroneously put on the ballot for. If she was put with one of the two major parties, it's theoretically possible, but not plausible, someone could get a win if no one read the ballot and went straight ticket. 

Of course, the actual candidate (and millions of others who voted) would have noticed such a discrepancy. This would likely be international news. The guy who changed it would go to jail or prison. Gabbi would have to prove her innocence.

[FUCK! 189]

Has anyone noticed that the end credits are in the friggen STAR WARS font!?

[EricFate 2]

I've lived in and around the Sacramento area for the past two decades, and I can honestly say, I have never heard of this film or film-maker.  But I am so fascinated by it now that I know it exists.

[ManScene ManVoice 13]

Simple fix, sorry if it’s been mentioned. She should have been running for student body government. Specifically, governor of the student body. She has a good message that catches on and even does interviews with the press, which catches on with all of California. People write her name in, and she wins. Plot twist, she loses her run for student body governor. Yes, this school does governor not president. 

[RyanSz 3140]

9 hours ago, Cam Bert said:

I'm not American or know much about American politics but I assume the whole state votes for the govern correct? So say Gabbi does make it on to the ballot, that means that a majority of the voters still had to vote for her right? Not just her five friends and grandma, but the majority of the third most populated state. California in 2017 had a population of 39,360,000 people. However that population includes youth and people that can't vote not to mention the number of people that don't vote for governor. The 2018 gubernatorial race had a turn out of 12,464,235 voters. That means Gabbi would need at least 33.4% of that vote which means roughly 4.2 million votes. That's more votes than any third party candidate has gotten in the history of California gubernatorial elections and as far as my math can tell more than all third party votes in California ever! What was it that drove them to this candidate they had never heard of? 

I have to assume that's why prior to Gabbi getting elected every stupid character mentioned at least once that the two other candidates were horrible and wished for another option. So carrying the logic of that being the shared sentiment of voters everyone just took a gamble and voted on a person who A) they never heard of before and B ) had absolutely zero campaign promotional material put out such as junk mail, commercials, or phone calls. I mean those other two had to have been fucking awful for such a thing to have happened.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

16 hours ago, DannytheWall said:

This sounds like an amazing(ly bad) movie. Skipped this one but the podcast was still hilarious. 

Blink (your ears?) and you'd miss it, but Jason thought it sounded like a better movie if Gabbi was a teenager, and that's exactly the premise of the comic book Prez by Mark Russell. 

Jason & Paul talked about Mark Russell's The Flintsones on a minisode somewhere, and yep, that book is in fact a VERY subversive social satire with genuine humor, pathos, and deep thoughts. If you liked that, look up Prez. 

Prez takes place in a near-future dystopia ruled by social media and corporations, a fateful combination that unwittingly allows a 16-year old girl who goes viral thanks to an unfortunate hot dog on a stick incident and finds herself catapulted to the highest office in the land. And biting satire ensues. The comic isn't as pointed as the Flintstones, and kind of has to rush to something like an ending, but there's some real gold in there. 

Another crazy fact? This is the *second* teenage president in DC comics. The first Prez was in 1974 written by Jack Simon (cocreator of Captain America) and features a young man named, foreshadowing-ly, Prez, who is a local hometown hero that goes on to win the presidency. It's a more straightforward story, inspired by the then-recent constitutional amendment that lowered the US voting age to 18, but could have used some more comicbook gimmickry like, I don't know, say, dinosaurs on jetpacks as a national emergency or something. It only lasted four issues but remains a perrenial favorite on any "How Did This Get Made" Comic Book Version trivia night.    

You can read Russell's Prez on comixology here   

Ah man, I must look that up, I always enjoyed Prez (who also appeared here and there in the Sandman-era Vertigo titles) but I haven't read Russell's book. Loved his Flintstones title, very smart stuff.

There were so many short-lived and one-shot superhero comics in the early to mid 70s. There used to be a DC fanzine or internal publication called Cancelled Comics Cavalcade where they would run pages of issues from comics that had been drawn but then got cancelled without publishing the issue in colour. My favourite Crazy Joe Simon Idea from then was the Green Team, a friendly quartet of millionaires who wore jumpsuits covered in pockets containing bundles of cash. They would just kind of roll up and solve every problem with money.

[number2 8]

How has no one mentioned Gabby's reaction to her paycheck?  She's astounded at the amount, and asks if that what she makes for the year then is even more amazed when she finds out that's her weekly paycheck.  The Governor of California's salary is $210,000 per year which breaks down to about $4000 per week (or about $3000 after taxes, etc.)  So Gabby, a college student and businesswoman, thinks that $3000 is an amazing yearly salary?

[Greg T 48]

On 11/7/2020 at 6:22 PM, Cam Bert said:

Govern Gabbi's first initiative as governor is for people to ride the bus instead of drive cars. The female crony of Balse complains numerous times of riding the bus so we know that this measure went into effect. Yet we have two story points that revolve around Gabbi's friends and family driving. First there is her Grandma and her non-stop car problems which means she's still driving around around and not bussing it which Gabbi is cool with. Also her friend Ellie is driving around getting parking tickets because she refuses to pay for parking. Balse threaten to boot her car because driving means so much to her. Gabbi is also seemingly fine with her friend driving everywhere and not paying tickets. Now if her plan was to force people with environmentally bad cars to stop driving, what's to stop them from buying an old clunker like her grandma or friend? Or rather is this all a deep statement on the hypocrisy of politicians looking the other way when policies would effect their friends and family.

I assumed she meant she was taking away the government -owned vehicles from the other officials, not that everyone in the state would be required to ride the bus.

[Greg T 48]

On 11/9/2020 at 10:38 AM, Cam Bert said:

I'm not American or know much about American politics but I assume the whole state votes for the govern correct? So say Gabbi does make it on to the ballot, that means that a majority of the voters still had to vote for her right? Not just her five friends and grandma, but the majority of the third most populated state. California in 2017 had a population of 39,360,000 people. However that population includes youth and people that can't vote not to mention the number of people that don't vote for governor. The 2018 gubernatorial race had a turn out of 12,464,235 voters. That means Gabbi would need at least 33.4% of that vote which means roughly 4.2 million votes. That's more votes than any third party candidate has gotten in the history of California gubernatorial elections and as far as my math can tell more than all third party votes in California ever! What was it that drove them to this candidate they had never heard of? 

There is one scene that shows the actual breakdown of the votes and Gabbi received 51% to 48% for the runner up and just 1% for third place.  That means she didn't just win a close election in which no one had any interest in either candidate.  Among the people who voted for someone they actually heard of, one candidate must have been so beloved that they had almost universal bipartisan support.  Gabbi winning was arguably an injustice to the people who were paying attention to state politics.

 

[TrueBreenius 38]

Here's my hypothesis about Governor Gabbi: Governor Gabbi is a companion piece to Fateful Findings. They have similar production values, acting, unintentional comedy, blatant misunderstanding of how government works, anti-corruption messaging, and terrible direction and editing, I think this isn’t a coincidence and the films are part of the same universe. Both movies have a few cartoonishly evil figures who represent political corruption and are defeated by the leads. We know that Neil Breen is hacking the most secret government and corporate secrets and uncovering more corruption than has ever been discovered, and given his godlike hacking alien powers, I’m sure he’d be capable of rigging elections in his favour and using a flimsy “bake sale mixup” to justify the outcome. We know from his films that he likes bland virtuous young blondes, what if he rigged the California election specifically to make Gabbi governor so that she could fight corruption there while he’s busy in Nevada?

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

On 11/9/2020 at 8:16 AM, grudlian. said:

You're right that the entire state votes for governor.

The best counter to this would be straight ticket voting which is voting for one party and, in every election I've voted in, is the first option on the ballot (this probably varies state to state). It will say something like Straight Ticket and give you a box to check for your preferred party. With electronic ballots, you can check the straight ticket box which fills in the box and, as you scroll through the rest of the ballot, can make individual changes for a particular candidate.

Straight ticket voting has always been a thing but, purely anecdotal evidence based on my friends, is that straight ticket voting has increased significantly after 2016. I don't remember if they listed what party Gabbi was erroneously put on the ballot for. If she was put with one of the two major parties, it's theoretically possible, but not plausible, someone could get a win if no one read the ballot and went straight ticket. 

Of course, the actual candidate (and millions of others who voted) would have noticed such a discrepancy. This would likely be international news. The guy who changed it would go to jail or prison. Gabbi would have to prove her innocence.

Straight ticket voting might be an explanation for what happened here, but I'm pretty sure California doesn't have a straight ticket voting option. You have to actually choose the individual candidates.

The laziness of the writing here is especially galling, since there was already The Distinguished Gentleman, an Eddie Murphy movie with a similar premise that had a much better explanation for how some random person gets elected to Congress: he has the same name as a real candidate who recently died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Distinguished_Gentleman

[grudlian. 4725]

16 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

Straight ticket voting might be an explanation for what happened here, but I'm pretty sure California doesn't have a straight ticket voting option. You have to actually choose the individual candidates.

The laziness of the writing here is especially galling, since there was already The Distinguished Gentleman, an Eddie Murphy movie with a similar premise that had a much better explanation for how some random person gets elected to Congress: he has the same name as a real candidate who recently died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Distinguished_Gentleman

I had no idea straight ticket wasn't available everywhere. It's only in six states apparently. Still a lot of people who vote for party over candidate which is pretty common so Gabbi being put on the ballot for a major party could in theory get votes that way.

I just looked up the ballot for the 2003 gubernatorial recall election in California. Does the California ballot normally list the candidate's current profession? Because that seems 1. weird and 2. another way to make this even less likely for Gabbi to win.

The candidate having the same name is absolutely a better story. Or the ballot misspelling Gabbi for Gabby or whatever. I know Paul suggested something similar. 

[grudlian. 4725]

I just realized Gabbi's friends are taking about who they will vote for outside on the street. Since Gabbi is only on the physical ballots, this means they were voting just in the streets? I assume California limits voting to actual polling sites.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

On 11/12/2020 at 12:48 PM, grudlian. said:

I just realized Gabbi's friends are taking about who they will vote for outside on the street. Since Gabbi is only on the physical ballots, this means they were voting just in the streets? I assume California limits voting to actual polling sites.

Voting in the streets, suppressing in the sheets