There is finally evidence of election fraud. We’ve heard a lot about it, but now they can prove it.
But it has nothing to do with the United States or presidents or anything like that. It’s all about the birds.
Each year, New Zealand holds online voting for their bird of the year. This year, the spotted kiwi jumped out to an early lead. Possibly nothing to be concerned with. Kiwis and New Zealand are pretty closely aligned, so the fact that many new Zealanders would be partial to the kiwi was understandable.
But officials dug a little deeper. That’s when the discovered that things were not entirely on the up and up. No press conferences at a random landscaping business or running hair die was required. They just simply noticed that fifteen hundred votes had all come from the same email address. There was a little glitch in the system that had allowed that to happen, but they quickly moved to fix it. And take away the extra votes from the kiwi.
You really couldn’t blame the kiwi. Or the person who figured out you could vote more than once and had the time and dedication to send fifteen hundred votes. But it still wasn’t fair, so they fixed the problem.
Apparently, that dropped the kiwi down quite a bit, allowing an endangered albatross to take the lead for a while. But the albatross (which, of course, is flippin’ seabird flavour, innit!) could not sustain the momentum. The eventual winner was what is known as a moss chicken.
At least, that’s what some people call them. It is really the Kakapo, a flightless parrot. Being flightless may be fine for your ostriches and emus and birds that can run really fast. While the Kakapo is pretty nimble, it’s lack of flight and running skills brought it to the brink of extinction. It can climb trees fairly well, but so can avoid some predators, but a nocturnal, flightless bird doesn’t have a lot of options.
But it is the Bird Of The Year in New Zealand. That’s something to be proud of. Although expect the kiwi to refuse to concede and keep complaining the election was rigged.
