19 Year Old Diebold Technician Wins U.S. Presidency

Washington, D.C., November 5, 2008 -- In a dramatic development that has come as a surprise to pundits and the public alike, a youthful technician with Diebold, Inc. has emerged as the unlikely winner of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. The president-elect, 19 year old Billy Pustule of Green, Ohio, reached via SMS at the garage apartment by his mother's house in which he currently resides, said he was "real psyched about being the president" and "had big plans for the inauguration party".

Veteran political observers including Seymour Shackleton of the Miami-Dade Political Coroner have expressed what amounts to sheer disbelief at the unanticipated outcome.

"To my knowledge, this is the first presidential election in American history won by an entirely unknown write-in candidate," Mr. Shackleton said. "No one seems to have even heard of Billy Pustule. A Google of his name turns up only five listings, all of them Amazon.com reader comments on anthologies of 19th century erotic cartoons. How the president-elect managed to build a sufficiently large grass-roots groundswell to clinch the election while operating in complete anonymity is, frankly, beyond me."

President-elect Pustule said he "has always been kind of interested in politics because of my job", a service technician and junior programmer at Diebold, Inc., the primary manufacturer of electronic voting machines in the United States. Tamper-proof Diebold electronic voting machines have figured prominently in recent U.S. elections, particularly those elections in which outsider candidates sharing a political affiliation with Diebold executives have won by bafflingly wide margins.

According to the official electronic tally, compiled and certified by Diebold voting engineers, President-elect Pustule won an impressive 59.6% of the popular vote nationwide, the strongest showing ever received by a write-in candidate since the dissolution of the Constitution in 2007. He was followed by 38% for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, and 28.6% for Republican candidate Bill Frist. The fact that the totals exceed 100% has been attributed by a Diebold spokesman to "a special kind of rounding".

President-elect Pustule said he was still working on his platform, but that he had "a lot of ideas about making acne medication cheaper and also making thongs required in more places". When asked about his thoughts regarding the continuing U.S. involvement in the Iraqi civil war, Mr. Pustule said he was "not sure exactly where that is. Is that in Iowa?"

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for losing Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, said "It's pretty obvious there were election irregularities here. Believe me, we're going to get to the bottom of them just as soon as I'm done playing with this karaoke machine. You like Joe Jackson?"

Losing Republican candidate Bill Frist also expressed concern that the democratic process may have been "tainted".

"You ever play poker with a big group of guys," he said, "and your partner's the dealer, and he slips you a beautiful quartet of aces without anybody noticing, and you've done this all a bunch of times before so you're feeling pretty confident and play all in, and then some other guy flips over a straight flush? Well, that's about how I'm feeling right about now."

President-elect Pustule has already submitted a request to outgoing president George W. Bush for an early inauguration, as he is "anxious to get out of his mom's garage, which has a major ant problem." President Bush, who has remained sequestered at his Crawford, Texas estate since his approval ratings dropped below the 10% level in May, was unavailable for comment.

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor