What Do We Have to Do to Get You to Vote?

The 2018 midterm election is less than 100 days away, and the issues at stake are more pressing than they have been in years: LGBTQ rights, a Supreme Court seat, ICE raids and detention, Russian attacks on our democratic process, women's reproductive rights, tax cuts for the rich, and slashing funds for the poor, sick, and elderly. But with it being a midterm election the turnout is expected to as abysmal as ever. In 2014, only 36.4 percent of eligible voters turned out to vote; about average for a midterm. Even during presidential elections only slightly more than half of voters turn out -- in 2016, only 55.5 percent of those eligible went to the polls.

We have tried for years to get people to vote. We have tried to talk rationally to you, tried to frighten you, we tried to bribe you with stickers and bragging rights on Instagram, but these efforts continue to fail. Our agents have tried to get you to register, but you have refused to make the minimal effort. That pudgy kid in the T-shirt holding the clipboard at Pride was not patiently waiting for you to finish puking up those fireball shots to hit on you; he was trying to get you registered. Those little old ladies who knocked on your door were not trying to tell you about Jesus; they were a septuagenarian lesbian couple trying to get you to vote to help defend their newly legal marriage, but you decided to scream at them through the door. We have tried to get you to care about others even when you would not be affected by the election because of your gender, income, race, or place of residence privileges, but you still will not vote. Therefore, we are forced to take action and impose consequences that will genuinely affect you.

Using information gathered from blackmailed Russian hackers we met in an underground gay bar in Smolensk, Cambridge Analytica data, and the openly available voting records found in any courthouse in the country, we have identified 3.2 million LGBTQ people who did not vote in 2014 or 2016. Why they haven't voted included reasons such as "It doesn't matter," "I didn't like her attitude," and "Both parties are the same." This flippant attitude has selected them for the second phase of our operation, which we titled "Operation Voting Matters More Than Drag Race Reruns." We also decided Gary doesn't get to name operations anymore. Point being, we have assembled a team of crack transgender women who are really into computers, really buff gay ex-military types, and closeted Republicans we found on Grindr who were agreeable after some "discussion" to help us execute our plan.

We have already hacked into the social media accounts, bank accounts, businesses, employers, and other connections of these people and installed computer software that has allowed us to quietly take control of them. On Election Day, if these individuals do not vote, we will subject them to the appropriate punishments. These punishments will include.

• Credit and debit cards will no longer work between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sundays at any restaurant that serves brunch.
• All Instagram posts will be replaced with that photo of you from eighth grade. Yes. That one.
• The only .gif you will be allowed to post on Twitter will be the dancing "Ooga Chaka Baby" from Ally McBeal, the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" banana, or Epic Sax Guy.
• No more Snapchat filters. Ever.
• Your favorite queen on Drag Race will block you on all social media.
• Your vacation to Ibiza, Miami, Sydney, or Vermont (where you're so going to love that B&B's rusticness) or some other hot gay destination will be quietly replaced with a trip to Branson, Mo., the Daytona 500, or the Wichita Corn Festival.
• You will never get Hamilton or Wicked tickets. Ever. It's just off-off-Broadway one-man productions of Murder in the Cathedral for you.
• Your Spotify lists are all Waylon Jennings and David Allen Coe now. You cannot change them.
• Your gym membership has been canceled. No refunds.
• You dating app profiles will list the names of all your exes. Yes, all of them. This includes the beards for the gay guys and all the dudes the "gold-star" lesbians hooked up with.
• No cute babies are ever available for adoption. Just ones with severe developmental issues that will eat up your bank account and time and also aren't the most photogenic for your Christmas cards.
• Our team of ex-military commandos will ensure through "persuasion":
  • The clerk at that boutique you love will always tell you that outfit looks great on you when it doesn't. And no, that color totally doesn't work for you.
  • That cute apartment just got rented.
  • They just sold out of the cheese plate.
  • No, this bar doesn't get Bravo.
  • All the five-star-reviewed Ubers are taken.

These punishments and more will be imposed within 72 hours of the close of all election polls in America upon these individuals who will not be identified beforehand. The only way to escape this punishment will be to publicly demonstrate you have voted on social media, or through confirmation of the voting rolls. Because these individuals have treated the very real consequences of elections with no great concern because they can use other forms of privilege, we have chosen to impose real consequences. Somehow, these are the things that for some reason they care about more than the erosion of democracy, civil and human rights, poverty, and lack of health care. We decided that imposing threats of actual consequences on these individuals now would be better for our society until waiting until something actually affected them, by which time most of us will have probably been ready to start a riot for years.

Go vote. Your name might be on our list.