For The Birds
Nov. 17th, 2020 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msconductIn an election notorious for voter fraud, 2020 has been the worst year yet: unsavoury allegations about candidates, proven fraudulent voting and a controversial result.
What? No, not that one! The 2020 US election was the most secure they've ever had. I'm talking, of course, about New Zealand's Bird Of The Year.
Birds are a huge thing here. Because New Zealand snapped off really early in history, birds took all the spots normally filled by mammals, and we have a lot of birds you find nowhere else. Unfortunately, because many of them are ground-dwelling, that means they had a pretty tough time of it when introduced mammals started competing with them and preying on them. We love our native birds, and we worry about them. Enter Bird Of The Year.
People campaign hard for their favourite bird. This year, for example, the kakariki karaka (orange-fronted parakeet) ran under the banner ‘The Orange Face You Can Trust’, even producing its own range of t-shirts, and the takahe had its own Tiktok account.
Sounds lovely and innocent, doesn't it? But beneath all that lurks a very dark underbelly. In international surveys of corruption, New Zealand always comes out boringly first equal squeaky cleanest with a nice-jumper-wearing Scandi country. However, you would never guess this from the conduct of the Bird Of The Year vote. Ever since the competition started in 2005, it's been a dirty business. More often than not they uncover rampant voter fraud as people try to push their favourite bird to the front of the pack. Flock. Even the introduction of an independent scrutineer in 2018 did nothing to stop the avalanche of cheating.
This year, eyebrows were raised when the polygamous hihi was endorsed by the Adult Toy Megastore. Then the competition was rocked by the shadowy forces of the Little Spotted Kiwi cabal putting in 1500 fraudulent votes from one IP address at 2 a.m.
And after all that, for the first time a previous winner, the kakapo, took the title again.
Not that it doesn't deserve it. The kakapo is the world's fattest parrot and also the most adorable. There are only 213 of them, they're critically endangered, we monitor them extremely closely and we love them to bits. But to win again? Hmm. Controversial.
So after all that cheating and dirty dealing, what do you get for winning Bird Of The Year? Er, absolutely nothing. There's a burst of extra publicity for the chosen bird, which is all to the good, but that's it. Despite this (or probably because of it) it attracts an enormous amount of interest. Voting in Bird Of The Year has grown from 900 votes in its first year to more than 55,000 votes this year. It's a national obsession and our favourite election by far.
What? No, not that one! The 2020 US election was the most secure they've ever had. I'm talking, of course, about New Zealand's Bird Of The Year.
Birds are a huge thing here. Because New Zealand snapped off really early in history, birds took all the spots normally filled by mammals, and we have a lot of birds you find nowhere else. Unfortunately, because many of them are ground-dwelling, that means they had a pretty tough time of it when introduced mammals started competing with them and preying on them. We love our native birds, and we worry about them. Enter Bird Of The Year.
People campaign hard for their favourite bird. This year, for example, the kakariki karaka (orange-fronted parakeet) ran under the banner ‘The Orange Face You Can Trust’, even producing its own range of t-shirts, and the takahe had its own Tiktok account.
Sounds lovely and innocent, doesn't it? But beneath all that lurks a very dark underbelly. In international surveys of corruption, New Zealand always comes out boringly first equal squeaky cleanest with a nice-jumper-wearing Scandi country. However, you would never guess this from the conduct of the Bird Of The Year vote. Ever since the competition started in 2005, it's been a dirty business. More often than not they uncover rampant voter fraud as people try to push their favourite bird to the front of the pack. Flock. Even the introduction of an independent scrutineer in 2018 did nothing to stop the avalanche of cheating.
This year, eyebrows were raised when the polygamous hihi was endorsed by the Adult Toy Megastore. Then the competition was rocked by the shadowy forces of the Little Spotted Kiwi cabal putting in 1500 fraudulent votes from one IP address at 2 a.m.
And after all that, for the first time a previous winner, the kakapo, took the title again.
Not that it doesn't deserve it. The kakapo is the world's fattest parrot and also the most adorable. There are only 213 of them, they're critically endangered, we monitor them extremely closely and we love them to bits. But to win again? Hmm. Controversial.
So after all that cheating and dirty dealing, what do you get for winning Bird Of The Year? Er, absolutely nothing. There's a burst of extra publicity for the chosen bird, which is all to the good, but that's it. Despite this (or probably because of it) it attracts an enormous amount of interest. Voting in Bird Of The Year has grown from 900 votes in its first year to more than 55,000 votes this year. It's a national obsession and our favourite election by far.
