The Goat Spitting Secret

This comedy is a dialog in which the characters Damien and Desha learn about ranked choice voting. Also they learn why a well-designed election system will bring widespread economic prosperity.

A young carpenter named Damien struggles to understand why the worlds of business and politics are upside-down for himself, his fiancé, and for his generation. He flunked out of community college so he gets assistance from Desha who is a wild young woman with a degree in political science. Together they meet in secret with wise mentors who help them dig under layers of political dung, teach them important insights that school textbooks fail to teach, and reveal the hidden path that will flip the world right-side up. What they learn reveals why the United States Congress lacks a backbone and couldn't escape from a soggy cardboard box lying on its side. In the exciting conclusion several worlds collide in surprising ways.

Here's what one reader wrote: "Personally I found myself so much better informed about how the world works."

If you are angry at the craziness going on in U.S. politics, if you're frustrated that low wages aren't keeping up with high inflation, if you fear yet more school shootings, and if you recognize that Republican and Democratic members of Congress are acting like candy-fueled kids in kindergarten just before nap time, please take time to learn the big secret you'll want to share with your friends.

Can't wait to learn the secret? The secret in a nutshell is called pairwise vote counting. It will be used in general elections to count ranked choice ballots. What does this mean? Read the story to join Damien and Desha in their insightful adventure! Or if you prefer to immediately jump to details about ranked choice voting, you can skip to Scene 5, Math Breakthrough.

Remember to share this secret with your friends!

This comedy is a dialog in which the characters Damien and Desha learn about ranked choice voting. Also they learn why a well-designed election system will bring widespread economic prosperity.

A young carpenter named Damien struggles to understand why the worlds of business and politics are upside-down for himself, his fiancé, and for his generation. He flunked out of community college so he gets assistance from Desha who is a wild young woman with a degree in political science. Together they meet in secret with wise mentors who help them dig under layers of political dung, teach them important insights that school textbooks fail to teach, and reveal the hidden path that will flip the world right-side up. What they learn reveals why the United States Congress lacks a backbone and couldn't escape from a soggy cardboard box lying on its side. In the exciting conclusion several worlds collide in surprising ways.

Here's what one reader wrote: "Personally I found myself so much better informed about how the world works."

If you are angry at the craziness going on in U.S. politics, if you're frustrated that low wages aren't keeping up with high inflation, if you fear yet more school shootings, and if you recognize that Republican and Democratic members of Congress are acting like candy-fueled kids in kindergarten just before nap time, please take time to learn the big secret you'll want to share with your friends.

Can't wait to learn the secret? The secret in a nutshell is called pairwise vote counting. It will be used in general elections to count ranked choice ballots. What does this mean? Read the story to join Damien and Desha in their insightful adventure! Or if you prefer to immediately jump to details about ranked choice voting, you can skip to Scene 5, Math Breakthrough.

Remember to share this secret with your friends!

Richard Fobes is the author of The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox which is a how-to book on creative problem solving. It has been published around the world in ten languages.

Richard's understanding of vote counting started when he was in a small music-and-dance organization that was voting on a new logo design. The worst design came close to winning because the two better designs were similar. This experience triggered his aha moment about vote splitting. That insight led to creating an innovative vote-counting method and including it in The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox, developing further aspects of VoteFair Ranking and writing a book about it titled Ending The Hidden Unfairness In U.S. Elections, creating interactive websites at VoteFair.org and NegotiationTool.com, and testifying to the Oregon state legislature and the City of Portland Charter Commission in support of well-chosen ways to count ranked choice ballots.

The story of The Goat Spitting Secret arose in Richard's mind as a dialog between different voices in his head. These different voices arose because Richard has experienced, at least briefly, being a corporate CEO, homeless person, commodity trader, manual laborer, business owner, hardware store clerk, landlord, renter, only male or only native English speaker in a household, member of a Christian religion created by a woman, physics student, grad student, atmospheric scientist, software developer, contract technical writer, neighborhood organizer, election-method expert, inventor, dance performance group leader, and dance instructor.