If you’re still undecided as to how to celebrate your God-given American Freedoms – in this case, when voting next Tuesday – you’ve always got Politics Party Pun to choose for you. Yes folks, this is indeed “the biggest GAME in the world.”

Like a cross between, Old Maid, craps, dreidel, and gambling, this game involves matching images, throwing dice, and pure luck – plus it requires every player bring money to the table.

 The success of a candidate in part requires voters to distinguish the often tempting idealist treacle we are force-fed, from our own perceptions – based as they often are on what we can read between the lines of sound bites, robo-calls, glossy mailers, interviews, elaborately designed public spectacles, carefully scripted debates, and the spiels of bright shiny young people with petitions shrewdly deployed on every street corner. This is all we often get in the way of solid information; in this country free and democratic elections have been reduced, for the most part, into a barrage of massively expensive and shallow rhetoric, from which we remain unrelieved until Election Day.  Not surprising then that the candidate who raises the most, most often wins. And whatever the dark operations of contending political machines, election outcomes often do hang on simple luck, like chads.

So with all this in mind, why not get in the mood for D-Day with a little game of Politics Party Pun? The object is to match the head and tail of either an elephant or a donkey with each roll of the dice. An entire animal allows you to take the pot. Non-matching dice – say, an elephant head and a donkey tail – make you a “non-voter,” (appropriate penalties apply).  It doesn’t specify what two asses’ asses make you, but I shudder to think.

"Whatever you do, don't tell Katharine Harris !"

In spite of what we learned in 2000, this game assures us that “You Can Win with Ballots … if You Vote.” Maybe this year.

Personally, I’ve always favored constitutional monarchies.

(posted by Lisa Hirschfield)