Difficult Victory

"Colorado, Sweetlanner Hobbs casts one vote for Frit Evans!"

A ballot reader announced the vote forcefully, raising the ballot high with both hands and turning it from side to side for everyone to see. It indeed showed that Colorado elector Sweetlanner Hobbs had cast one vote for Frit Evans.

On the large projected screen behind the podium, Frit Evans's vote count displayed: one.

The hearts of the conscious elector-legislators present immediately sank. Things had gone badly from the very start.

Colorado's Sweetlanner Hobbs was undoubtedly the elector who had switched sides most frequently. He refused S.H.I.E.L.D.'s confinement-like protection, repeatedly being restored to clarity by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Mind Disruptor before easily falling under Loki's Mind Control again, constantly declaring his shifts back and forth.

The first vote was broadcast live across the nation and outside the Capitol Building plaza, causing an uproar. The people of Colorado in particular were so furious their teeth clenched in hatred.

"Wow—"

"Damn it, Sweetlanner Hobbs really switched his vote!"

"I should've broken Sweetlanner Hobbs's legs in advance."

"That damned thing—I don't accept his vote."

"We never should have chosen that bastard as an elector!"

The voting did not stop because of the public uproar. Very soon, Louisiana's elector cast the second vote, still for Frit Evans.

Then came the third vote. Texas's elector also cast a vote for Frit Evans, enraging a man in a Texas bar so much that he flung away his glass, raised an assault rifle, and fired furiously into the sky.

The fourth, fifth, and tenth votes that followed all went to Frit Evans, as though He-El and secretary of state Yolanda Priscus had merely come to serve as decoration.

An inexplicable, oppressive weight settled over the heads of every conscious elector-legislator.

The people of all fifty states watching the vote count,