Election 2000

The intermingling to which Durkheim refers is, in the end, not a fusion but a fiction, a fiction which in turn is accepted because the parties to it have an interest in accepting it. Like the political relationship of representation itself, the possibility of betrayal is a defining feature. The ballot is not a mechanical substitute for representation, it is its simulacrum. Some machines, like some representatives, conceal this possibility better than others. But the idea of a perfect vote is in the end no better than the idea of the perfect representative.