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If you haven't heard, the Harvard Class of 2016 elected Program Marshals for commencement (graduation) exercises this week. Basically, it's a popularity contest to determine who gets to sit on stage with Natalie Portman or John Oliver or whoever it is this year. At some point, I guess we'll hear the results.

Of course, in the post-Clark–Mayopoulos era, exactly zero of the campaigns were serious. I think the most serious policy proposal that made it through my spam filter was, verbatim, "P.S. Jon Stewart/John Oliver for Class Day??". But, of course, posters, facebook groups, and an infuriating flood of mass emails have made an appearance nonetheless. One in particular stands out, because I think it represents a lapse in judgment so egregious, the party in question should be lowered in public status.

Karim Pirbay sent two mass emails to the senior class. The first included this gem:

If there is any way I can bribe you for a vote, I’d be happy to work something out… I recently sent some money to the Prince of Nigeria and should be receiving $10 million very soon. Should this not suffice, maybe the few screenshots I preciously saved these past three years cataloguing slightly embarrassing, potentially incriminating Snapchats will compel you to cast your vote this coming Tuesday.

Which was un-funny, and definitely lost my vote, but not the reason that we're talking now. The second was worse:

That's an email, sent from "Drew Faust" (address: kpirbay@college.harvard.edu), on letterhead that says "Harvard Office of the President", and formatted substantially similarly to the typical email sent by, well, Drew

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Political betting site PredictIt offers everyone the ability to (legally) bet (real money) on the outcome of political events. For example:

You can pay 39¢ for a Yes share in BUSH.RNOM16, which will be worth $1 if Jeb Bush wins the Republican nomination, and $0 if he does not. Similarly, you can pay 63¢ for a No share in BUSH.RNOM16, which will be worth $0 if he wins and $1 otherwise. (Another way to think about this is that you can sell a Yes share for 37¢ or buy one for 39¢. These numbers are different for pretty much the same reason that you can't sell your used textbooks back to Amazon for the full price you paid.)

If you have a strong information that Bush is, say, 50% likely to win, then you might buy a lot of Yes shares, and therefore drive the price up. In this way, the market records a sort of weighted-vote among the people willing to bet on the site -- the fact that it's stabilized at 37¢–39¢ should mean, in an efficient market, that all participants agree that the probability that he wins is above 37% and below 39%. If they disagreed, they could make money in expectation by betting their beliefs, which would move (or at least widen) the market.

or, "Ted Cruz's Campaign Logo is an Upside-Down, Burning American Flag"

First, a short lesson about why you should buy www.yourname.com before announcing your presidential campaign:

The site is, apparently, registered to Ted Cruz.

Just a different Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile, on Twitter...

Ted Cruz's campaign logo looks so familiar. pic.twitter.com/XsWYau105R

— clydetheslyde (@clydetheslyde) March 23, 2015

and on Gawker...

...and the Washington Post, who "could go on all day".

I guess, if you're a serious person, you might appreciate the Christian Science Monitor's serious article asking "Isn't this a bit early to be announcing a candidacy?" -- with a resounding (and data-supported answer of "no") -- and "Hasn't there been a lot of campaign coverage already this cycle?" -- with a similarly-supported answer of "yes".

Here we go again.

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Vote! Today! Before 8pm!

Yesterday, I linked a polling-place guide from the IOP, which was two years out of date. The HPR has a good guide to candidates and their issues, but their polling-place list for Harvard students is also incorrect.^[1] As far as I can tell, the list goes:

• Harvard Yard (inc. Union; exc. Apley), Adams: Gund Hall (48 Quincy Street)
• Dunster, Leverett: Putnam Apartments (2 Mt. Auburn Street)
• Apley, Lowell, Mather, Quincy: Quincy House (58 Plympton Street)
• Quad: Graham and Parks School (44 Linnaean Street)
• Eliot: Friends Meeting House (5 Longfellow Park)

It's unclear to me where Winthrop and Kirkland vote; whether they're also with Eliot, or if they vote in Quincy with the rest.

The Crimson also has a bit on early polling results, especially regarding the four ballot initiatives (indexing the state gasoline tax to consumer prices, expansion of $0.05 bottle-recycling rebates to all non-alcoholic, non-carbonated drinks, banning casinos and dog-racing betting, and sick-leave entitlements for private Mass. employees).

Now go do that now, and come back when you're done!

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Landry and Harris, pursuing the "hacker edition"^[?] of running for UC prez, make it onto the ballot despite collecting petition signatures for only 23 hours. Campaigning is prohibited for another week, and, while it's unclear whether or not the UC Election Committee counts private blogs as press, I'm going to shut up about them for that interval. Expect more later.

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Speaking of UC ballot petitions, the Harvard Teaching Campaign is collecting signatures to put a referendum question on the UC ballot asking:

Do you support or oppose a cap of 12 students on all mandatory and graded sections and

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Reminder: What may be your best chance this year to shape the future of your city/state/nation is tomorrow. So go out there and do the thing! If you're at Harvard and forgot where the heck you were supposed to go to do the thing, tomorrow's post has the rundown.

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Michael Landry '16 and Connor Harris '16 have declared their candidacy for the Harvard Undergraduate Council (vice-)presidency. You may know Michael because the Crimson wrote a piece about him last week, and you may know Connor because he keeps saying smart things about transportation policy, urban planning, and liberal arts education to everyone in earshot.

Cutting to the quick, I'm going to go right out and declare my support for these two right now. I will inevitably write more later, but for now, you should sign the petition to put them on the ballot if you trust my judgment in matters of politics. Or, like, if you believe in the power of a free and open marketplace of ideas.

Update: Connor has announced the official Landry-Harris platform via press release at 1:30 am EST, Monday, November 2:

I'm running for UC with Michael Landry and you should all sign the petition for us to be on the ballot. Campaign planks to include, in descending order of seriousness:

1) better disabled access to Harvard's old buildings;

2) repealing the Thursday dinner dhall restrictions because they're annoying as fuck;

3) getting every department to publish their concentrators' average in- and out-of-concentration GPAs, so one could subtract the former from the latter, sort descending, and have a pretty good index of which concentrations are the hardest or have