An instant classic

As a registered Oregon voter for more than four decades, I consider myself a connoisseur of fine election porn. I have received so many flyers over the years urging me to vote this way or that, I can tell the good from the bad before the mailman is off the porch.

But in yesterday's pile of election porn, there was a flyer so good, so exquisitely effective, so positively wonderful, it surpasses by far any item of its kind that I've ever gotten.

At first glance, it's just another campaign come-on – to vote no on the Metro payroll tax, Measure 26-218, which the opponents cleverly (and not inaccurately) call a "wage tax":

Bland enough, except for that curious bit at the bottom right. Not sure what that's about. But if you flip the flyer over before tossing it in the recycling, you feast your eyes on this:

That's interesting, a flow chart. But look closer.  It's a scratch-off! 

OMG.  I quick, run and get a penny, and start scratching. And oh, the payoff.

I start on the left side, which leads off with a question for those who don't know what Metro is (a fork in the road which is funny already):

Ha!  Who wrote this?  It's gold!

I almost don't want it to end, but I move my penny over to the right side, where it gets even better:

To the people who thought of this, the wags who wrote the copy, and the higher-ups who approved it, what can I say, but thank you, thank you, thank you! You have raised the bar on election porn, by a Clackamas County mile. Let's hope there's much, much more of this sort of thing to come in the years ahead. (Or at least for the brief remaining period in which there are democratic elections in this country.)

Fear not, for we will remember.